Ending Birth-Right Citizenship is inherently important, but at this point, is it a sedative injection for America’s already baked-in Mulatto supremacist trajectory?
Is it just tossing a bone to right wing sell outs - a bone picked clean of loyal White interests? - for the Zionist quid pro quo?
Wall Street Journal, 30 Oct 2018:
“Trump Wants to Curb Birthright Citizenship, Escalating Immigration Debate”
Legal scholars dismiss the idea, saying a president lacks standing to do it on his own
WASHINGTON—President Trump said he wants to sign an executive order that ends the automatic right to citizenship for anyone born in the U.S., ratcheting up his election-season remarks on immigration with a proposal many legal scholars said is unconstitutional.
In an interview published Tuesday morning, just ahead of next week’s midterms, Mr. Trump said he planned an executive order to end what is known as birthright citizenship, bypassing Congress and waving off the belief of many legal scholars that such a move would require a change to the Constitution.
“It was always told to me that you needed a constitutional amendment. Guess what? You don’t,” he told Axios. “It’s in the process. It’ll happen, with an executive order.”
Born in the U.S.Since 2007, the number of births to unauthorized immigrants has declined. Source: Pew Research Center
Constitutional scholars dismissed the idea, saying a president has no legal standing to end birthright citizenship with an executive order. “It’s basically saying the president is above the Constitution,” said Laura K. Donohue, a senior scholar at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution.
The White House didn’t further explain Mr. Trump’s assertion that he alone could make the move, and it didn’t provide further details about the scope of the proposed executive order or the timing.
“We will let you know when we have an announcement,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said.
Birthright citizenship is a pillar of U.S. immigration law and is protected by the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which, among other goals, was designed to grant full citizenship to former slaves. But some conservatives who favor more restrictive immigration laws have opposed the policy, saying it improperly rewards the children of people in the country who lack proper documentation.
Mr. Trump’s proposal is the latest in a string of pronouncements as he seeks to invigorate GOP voters ahead of the midterms. He recently suggested a middle-income tax cut that appeared to surprise both his staff and lawmakers. Last week, he said he would seek to cut prices that Medicare pays for some prescription drugs, but that wouldn’t go into effect until late 2019 or 2020.
On immigration, Mr. Trump has seized on a slow-moving migrant caravan headed toward the U.S.-Mexico border, part of his push to toughen rules on people seeking asylum in the U.S. Mr. Trump has previously said he opposed birthright citizenship, but he hadn’t floated an executive order nor included it in his list of requests during the latest round of congressional negotiations.
The Justice Department’s official position from 1995, posted on its website, is that only a constitutional amendment can alter the citizenship provision; a bill or executive order doing so would be “unconstitutional on its face,” the department’s Office of Legal Counsel concluded. A spokeswoman didn’t respond when asked if that opinion would now be reconsidered.
The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” Some opponents of birthright citizenship have argued the “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” clause could be read to exclude babies born to people who were in the U.S. illegally.
That interpretation, however, runs contrary to the Constitution Annotated, published by the Library of Congress, which says the “jurisdiction” exclusion applies to “children born of diplomatic representatives of a foreign state, children born of alien enemies in hostile occupation, or children of members of Indian tribes subject to tribal laws.”
The Supreme Court has routinely applied the amendment broadly when it has been tested.
Critics of birthright citizenship also have taken aim at what some call “birth tourism,” in which pregnant women travel to the U.S. in order to have children who receive the benefit of citizenship. Companies in China have attracted attention in recent years for advertising such services.
Amending the Constitution is exceedingly difficult, requiring supermajority support from Congress and assent from 38 state legislatures, or a constitutional convention, the last of which was held in 1787. As a workaround, Republican lawmakers have periodically introduced legislation to change the historic understanding of the 14th Amendment, without success. Rep. Steve King (R., Iowa) has repeatedly done so, and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) said Tuesday morning that he would push for another legislative effort.
“I plan to introduce legislation along the same lines as the proposed executive order,” Mr. Graham wrote on Twitter while praising Mr. Trump. “Finally, a president willing to take on this absurd policy of birthright citizenship.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said he would “closely review” any order from Mr. Trump, but he indicated any policy changes on immigration should be left to Congress.
Others openly disagreed with Mr. Trump. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), who is leaving office after this year, dismissed the idea of an executive order in an interview with a Kentucky radio station. Tweeted Rep. Justin Amash (R., Mich) about Mr. Trump’s comments: “A president cannot amend [the] Constitution or laws via executive order.”
Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, called Mr. Trump’s plans ill-timed and misguided. “Aside from being unconstitutional, such an executive order would exacerbate racial tensions, exploit fears and drive further polarization across the country at a moment that calls for unity and inclusion,” Ms. Clarke said.
In 2014, about 275,000 babies were born to unauthorized-immigrant parents, about 7% of the four million births that year, according to a Pew Research Center report on government data.
Mr. Trump, in his Axios interview, incorrectly said the U.S. is “the only country in the world where a person comes in and has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen.” Dozens of countries in the Americas, including the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, have birthright citizenship, according to the CIA World Factbook. Most countries in Europe, Asia and Africa don’t, and they require that at least one parent be a citizen for their child to get automatic citizenship.
People in the U.S. support birthright citizenship by about a 2-to-1 ratio, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll from September 2017 found. In the survey, more Republicans called for ending birthright citizenship than continuing it, by 52% to 42%. Independents and Democrats supported birthright citizenship by large margins.
“We all think this is a base election. But today’s announcement, and everything Trump’s done in the immigration space, is having a large impact on the independent and moderate voters,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, which advocates for comprehensive changes to immigration law. “Those are the voters who will determine which way these races go and they don’t like the idea of changing our constitution or separating families” apprehended at the border.
