"Immigrant Babies & Citizenship": Journal Activity

Please read the attached document and complete the journal activity which appears at the end of the article on page 603-604.

1. Will''s essay addresses the legal meaning of citizenship in the context of debates about immigration. What does citizenship mean to you? What privileges and obligations go along with it? How is its meaning for you shaped by you own ethnic or cultural background?

' WiIJIAn Argument to Be Made about Immigrant Babies and Citizenship 601 To end the practice of \"birthright citizenship,\" all that is required is to 2 correct the misinterpretation of that amendment's rst sentence; "All per- sons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdic tion thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.\" From these words has flowed the practice of conferring citizenship on children born here to illegal immigrants. A parent from a poor country, writes professor Lino Graglia of the Uni- 3 versity of Texas law School, \"can hardly do more for a child than make him or her an American citizen, entitled to all the advantages of the American welfare state.\" Therefore, \"It is difcult to imagine a more irrational and self-defeating legal system than one which makes unauthorized entry into this country a criminal offense and simultaneously provides perhaps the greatesr possible inducement to illegal entry.\" Writing in the Texas Review oflaw and Politics; Graglia says this irra 4 tionality is rooted in a misunderstanding of the phrase \"subject to the jurisdiccion thereof.\" What was this intended or understood to mean by those who wrote it in 1866 and ratied it in 1868? The authors and rati- ers could not have intended birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants because in 1868 there were and never had been any illegal imngmntr because no law ever land restricted immigration. If those who wrote and ratied the Fourteenth Amendment bad imag 5 inecl laws restricring immigration and had anticipated huge waves of il- legal immigration is it reasonable to presume they would have wanted to provide the reward of citizenship to the children of the violators of those laws? Surely not. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 begins with language from which the 6 Fourteenth Amendment's citizenship clause is derived: \"All persons born in the United States, and not subject to anyireign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States.\" (Empha- sis added.) The explicit exclusion of indians from birthright citizenship was not repeated in the Fourteenth Amendment because it was considered unnecessary. Although Indians were at least partially subject to US. juris~ diction, they owed allegiance to their tribes, not the United States. This reasoning divided allegiance m applies equally to exclude the children of resident aliens, legal as well as illegal, from birthright citizenship. Indeed, today's regulations issued by the departments of Homeland Security and justice stipulate: \"A person born in the United States to a foreign diplomatic ofcer 7 accredited to the United States, as a matter of international law, is not subject to thejuriscliction ofthe United States. That person is not a United States citizen under the 14th Amendment.\" Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois was, Graglia writes, one of two a \"principal authors ofthe citizenship clauses in [the] 1866 act and the Four teenth Amendment.\" He said that \"subject to the jurisdiction of the United States\" meant subject to its \"complete\" jurisdiction, meaning \"not owing allegiance to anybody else." Hence children whose Indian parents had tribal allegiances were excluded from birthright citizenship. 602 Argumentation Appropriately, in 1884 the Supreme Court held that children born to 9 Indian parents were not born "subject to" U.S. jurisdiction because, among other reasons, the person so born could not change his status by his "own will without the action or assent of the United States." And "no one can become a citizen of a nation without its consent." Graglia says this decision "seemed to establish" that U.S. citizenship is "a consensual relation, requir- ing the consent of the United States." So: "This would clearly settle the question of birthright citizenship for children of illegal aliens. There can- not be a more total or forceful denial of consent to a person's citizenship than to make the source of that person's presence in the nation illegal." Congress has heard testimony estimating that more than two-thirds of 10 all births in Los Angeles public hospitals, and more than half of all births in that city, and nearly 10 percent of all births in the nation in recent years, have There cannot be a more been to mothers who are here illegally. total or forceful denial Graglia seems to establish that there is of consent to a person's no constitutional impediment to Con- #citizenship than to make gress ending the granting of birthright citizenship to those whose presence here the source of that person's is "not only without the government's presence in the nation consent but in violation of its law." illegal,GEORGE F. WILL An Argument to Be Made about immigrant Babies and Citizenship Pulitzer Prizewinning political columnist George F. Will was born in 1941 in Champaign, Illinois. After receiving an undergraduate degree at Trinity College and a master's degree from Oxford, Will earned an MA. and a PhD. in politi. cal science at Princeton University. He taught at the University of Toronto and the University of Michigan and then served on the staff of Colorado senator Gordon Allot from 1970 to 19?2. Will began hlsjournalism career as a writer and editor at the National Review, a conservative magazine, in the early19705. Since 19M, Will has written a nationally syndicated political column for the Washing- ton Post. He is also the author of several books, including Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball (1988). Restoration: Congress, Term Limits, and the Recovary of Dalila. erative Democracy (1992), and One Man's America: The Pleasures and Provocations ofOur Singular Nation (2008), a collection of his columns. Background on children born to non-U5. citizens Will cites congressional testimony estimating that nearly 10 percent ofall recent US. births "have been to mothers who are here illegally." According to a report by the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center, that gure is approximately correct. The study found that while undocumented immigrants make upjust over 4 percent of the popu- lation, they are producing 3 percent of the nation's babies: 340,000 of the 4.3 million children born in the United States in 2008. Estimates of the total undocumented immigrant population generally vary between 10 and i2 mil- lion; according to the Pew Center. iii million were living in the United States in 2009, down from a peak of 12 million in 2007. Researchers attribute the de cline both to a weak economy and to stricter border enforcement. Most un- documented immigrants come from Mexico (6.65 million). followed by El Sal- vador (530,000), Guatemala (480,000), Honduras (320,000), the Philippines (270.000), India (200,000), and South Korea (2.000). California has the largest population of undocumented immigrants in the United States: 8 percent of the state's population. California's Department of Health Services birth statistics do not include the legal status of new parents, but the department's records indicate that nearly half the state's babies are born to immigrant mothers (legal immigrants in theistate outnumber illegal immigrants by 3 to l). A simple reform would drain some scalding steam from immigration arguments that may soon again be at a roiling boil. It would bring the in terpretation ofche Fourteenth Amendment into conformity with what the authors of its texc intended, and with common sense, thereby removing an incentive to r illegal immigration. 600