Okay. So you agree with Harry Reid. What can I say.Fear and bigotry makes strange bedfellows.
Fear and bigotry? By whom.?
Take a shot, Socrates.
BTW, There is no need for an amendment.
I agree, but I disagree with why you think that.
There is no need for an amendment because it is another case in which your party is trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist.
But if the GOP wishes to change current law (which includes birthright citizenship), then it requires amending the Constitution.
Whether you like it or not.
No, it doesn’t.
From your response, you appear clueless.
That's really not sufficiently pointed to expose just how
deeply clueless you truly are, Redd.
You don't understand the origins of this country, including the Constitution, and the basis for birthright citizenship.
You don't understand either the language or the intent of our mid-century laws, including though not exclusively, the 14th Amendment.
And you don't understand your own party's bigotry which underlies this cynical effort by President Trump which has been repudiated even by the Speaker of the House (for all that he will not hold that job long).
The 14th Amendment reads:
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.
There was considerable discussion in the Senate concerning this language, especially with an eye to (a) "every person born within the limits of the United States" and (b) "subjecxt to their jurisdiction."
The exclusions were narrow and explicitly written.
This... will include every other class of persons."
Not "a few other classes of persons." Not "every other class of persons except those whom a future president or a future poster on a message board wishes to exclude." The restrictions that you (and President Trump) see in this passage are illusory, a product of fervent wishful thinking that has no bearing on the truth.
Nor do we need to try to interpret the meaning, for all that (a) you wish to and (b) Justice Gray did in 1898; they spelled it out in creating the 14th Amendment.
Senator Cowan of California took your side on whether children of aliens should be permitted, fearing both the Chinese offspring in California and the Gypsies in his native Pennsylvania. Senator Conness, also of California, responded, “The proposition before us . . . relates simply in that respect to the children begotten of Chinese parents in California, and it is proposed to declare that they shall be citizens. . . . I am in favor of doing so. . . .”
Both the proponents of the 14th Amendment
and its opponents understood that it included children of aliens - ALL aliens, except those explicitly excluded. This is explored (voluminously) by Justice Gray's decision, as previously noted. But it is reaffirmed in multiple decisions since, like Plyler v. Doe, in which the majority held that illegal alien children are people "in any ordinary sense of the term." This flew in the face of the argument from Texas that illegal aliens were not "within the jurisdiction" of the state and thus could not claim protections under the Fourteenth Amendment.
The majority stated that, "no plausible distinction with respect to Fourteenth Amendment 'jurisdiction' can be drawn between resident immigrants whose entry into the United States was lawful, and resident immigrants whose entry was unlawful."
Even the dissent agreed with that understanding, Redd.
This is what the 14th Amendment means: "
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."
Senator Howard, again: “[Section 1] will, if adopted by the states, forever disable every one of them from passing laws trenching upon those fundamental rights and privileges which pertain to citizens of the United States, and to all persons who may happen to be within their jurisdiction. It establishes equality before the law, and it gives to the humblest, the poorest, the most despised of the race the same rights and the same protection before the law as it gives to the most powerful, the most wealthy, or the most haughty. That, sir, is republican government, as I understand it, and the only one which can claim the praise of a just Government.”
And the opposition, Rogers of New Jersey this time, spelled out the dire consequences of such a bill: ‘The right to vote is a privilege,’ he said. ‘The right to marry is a privilege. The right to contract is a privilege. The right to be a juror is a privilege. The right to be a judge or President of United States is a privilege. I hold if [Section 1] ever becomes a part of the fundamental law of the land it will prevent any state from refusing to allow anything to anybody embraced under this term of privileges and immunities,’ he said. ‘That, sir, will be an introduction to the time when despotism and tyranny will march forth undisturbed and unbroken, in silence and in darkness, in this land which was once the land of freedom...’”
But in truth, it is the despotism of those who wish to exclude others from citizenship and the rights thereto that is at issue. This is what the street adress issue is about, the gerrymandering, the voter ID, the voter suppression efforts in so many states: keeping people opposed to the GOP and its policies from voting.
This attempt to get around the Constitution is just more of the same.
Lincoln would be disgusted by you, Redd, and with good cause.