Perspective: New Era Citizenship and the Constitution
The perception and implementation of birthright citizenship dates back to the 1800s. In the 1857 United States Supreme Court ruling of Dred Scott v. Sandford, the Court essentially declared that African Americans, including the children of freed slaves, were not citizens. In 1868, the United States ratified the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, instituting the Citizenship Clause in Section 1, stating, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” As a result, African Americans were finally considered U.S. citizens.
In 1898, the Supreme Court in States v. Wong Kim Ark held that children born in the United States to Chinese nationals became citizens at the time of birth by virtue of the first clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
Some biased critics of birthright citizenship continuously contest its meaning and purpose, thus leading to undemocratic acts and proposed legislation. Recently, the State of Texas denied U.S.-citizen children of Mexican nationals their birth certificates. Consequently, a lawsuit against Texas was filed for the violation of the children’s 14th Amendment right to their birthright citizenship. As a result of the lawsuit, Texas changed its direction and began issuing the birth certificates to the children.
Based on the plain language of the 14th Amendment, all children of undocumented immigrants automatically become U.S. citizens when they are born on American soil. As the Court specifically stated in Wong Kim Ark, “The amendment, in clear words and in manifest intent, includes the children born within the territory of the United States of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States.”
The Citizenship Clause embodies the jus soli rule of citizenship; citizenship is acquired by right of the soil. Moving forward, we must be cognizant of what the framers of the Constitution desired, set with current jurisprudence, that the 14th Amendment confers citizenship to U.S.-born children of all undocumented immigrants whether they are of Mexican heritage or not.
This signed article was written at The Daily Record’s invitation to underscore the theme of Law Day 2017.
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