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The lawmakers who wrote the Fourteenth Amendment never dreamed of the lengths to which future Democrats would go to twist the authorial intent of the amendment into a wrongheaded policy harmful to Americans.Recently, a Fox News interviewer was discussing President Trump’s executive order concerning birthright citizenship with Border Czar Tom Homan. When the interviewer made the assertion that “the Fourteenth Amendment does not differentiate between somebody who is in the country legally or illegally,” Homan replied, “I’m not an attorney, but… we have… many legal scholars — constitutional scholars — who say that it doesn’t really say that.”
So, here is what the Constitution says about birthright citizenship: “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.” The wording makes it clear that persons born in the U.S., but subject to the jurisdiction of another country, are not American citizens. In other words, babies born to foreign nationals who are subject to the jurisdiction of Mexico are Mexican citizens, because they, like their parents, are subject to the jurisdiction of Mexico — not the United States.
The Fourteenth Amendment was one of the Civil War amendments passed to ensure the equal protection under law of former slaves. All the babies born to these people were, according to the law, born subject to the jurisdiction of the laws of the United States, because their parents — although enslaved — were subject to the jurisdiction of those same laws. Ex-slaves were, therefore, recognized as natural-born or naturalized U.S. citizens, according to the plain wording of the Fourteenth Amendment. The authors of the amendment never intended to reward childbearing criminal aliens, who broke into the country unlawfully, by permitting their offspring to be considered rightful citizens of the United States.
The lawmakers who wrote the Fourteenth Amendment never dreamed of the lengths to which future Democrats would go to twist the authorial intent of the amendment into a wrongheaded policy harmful to Americans. Senator Jacob Howard, co-author of the Fourteenth Amendment with Senator Lyman Trumbull, clearly explained the meaning of the modifying clause “subject to the jurisdiction of the United States,” per the Congressional Globe of May 30, 1866. It is clear from his comments that the original intent was not to allow illegal aliens to claim birthright citizenship, but to clarify that formerly enslaved persons were citizens of the United States from birth, since their parents were subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and no other country. Constitutional language has always been written to express universal principles that apply across cases, which is why the amendment does not mention slaves, per se, nor any other special class of persons.
During a discussion of the proposed text of the amendment before Congress, Senator Howard proclaimed, “This amendment… is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already, that every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.”
<img alt captext="AT via Magic Studio” class=”post-image-right” src=”https://conservativenewsbriefing.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/tom-homan-is-right-babies-of-criminally-present-aliens-are-not-citizens.jpg” width=”450″>Senator Edgar Cowan of Pennsylvania asked a rhetorical question: “Is the child of the Chinese immigrant in California a citizen?” And in later comments, Cowan asked, “[I]s it proposed that the people of California are to remain quiescent while they are overrun by a flood of immigration?… Are they to be immigrated out of house and home by the Chinese?” Senator Trumbull answered: “The provision is that ‘all persons born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens.’ That means ‘subject to the complete jurisdiction thereof.’ (Referencing remarks by Senator James Doolittle of Wisconsin, Trumbull continued:) Now, does the Senator from Wisconsin pretend to say that the Navajoe [sic] Indians are subject to the complete jurisdiction of the United States?… Can you sue a Navajoe Indian in court?” (In the postbellum era, a Navajo was considered a citizen of an independent Indian nation, unlike today, when an American Indian possesses U.S. citizenship, “provided being a citizen of the U.S. does not impair the person’s status as a citizen of the tribe.”)
The Fourteenth Amendment stipulates the following: “The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.” This simple sentence means that Congress may make uniform rules and legal clarifications without needing any new constitutional amendments. Since Congress has never legislatively established a rule to allow criminally-present aliens to create new U.S. citizens by having babies in the U.S., the longstanding legal situation may rightly be interpreted as one in which We the People have not seen fit to alter the original intent of the Fourteenth Amendment. Currently, Title 8, Section 1401, of the U.S. Code spells out who may be considered a citizen, but it does not prohibit further executive clarification.
The president, as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, may clarify policy with regard to enforcement. For example, President Trump would be well within his rights to issue an executive order stating that holders of Resident Alien Cards (Green Cards), since they are uniquely subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, have the option to file for U.S. citizenship for their American-born children. At the same time, he might decide to treat differently the holders of work visas without Green Cards.
In the absence of an act of Congress — or any further executive orders issued — which may state otherwise, President Trump’s January 20, 2025, executive order outlawing the extension of birthright citizenship to babies born to criminally-present aliens shall stand as the official law-enforcement mechanism under the Constitution.
Paul Dowling’s book on the Constitution is Keeping a Free Republic — downloadable for $1.99. Additionally, Paul has contributed to Independent Sentinel and Free Thought Matters.
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