Amending the 14th Amendment, Another Fake Out?

Yesterday, a group of Republican Senators came out in favor of holding hearings on amending the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship rights to anyone born in the United States. This wouldn't be unusual if the Republicans were Jim DeMint or a James M. Inhofe. But they weren’t. This time it was Arizona’s John McCain and Jon Kyl, McCain’s domestic partner Lindsey Graham, and Alabama’s Jeff Sessions. A strange collection indeed. So is this for real? In truth, I think the answer is “no.”

Right now the 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to anyone born to American parents or anyone born on United States territory. This second part is the problem, as it allows what have been called “anchor babies.” This involves a mother rushing to the United States just in time to give birth. Once the child is born, it becomes an American citizen. The mother then uses the child as a means to stay in the United States legally and eventually become a citizen herself.

It is estimated that 3.8 million illegal immigrants in this country (of the currently estimated 10.8 million -- 2 million left because of the recession) have children who are United States citizens.

Of this, John Sessions says:

"I'm not sure exactly what the drafters of the (14th) amendment had in mind, but I doubt it was that somebody could fly in from Brazil and have a child and fly back home with that child, and that child is forever an American citizen."

Yeah, I kind of doubt that too.

The 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868 after the Civil War to grant citizenship to recently freed slaves. Had the 14th Amendment required that at least one parent be a United States citizen before the child could gain citizenship, then slaves would not have qualified as none of them were citizens. Thus, it provided citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States.”

At the time this was passed, it was never contemplated that Mexico would essentially fall apart south of us and that Mexicans would use this as a means of fleeing their country. Indeed, when this was passed in the 1860s, Mexico was quite prosperous. As for the rest of the world, it's not very likely that many pregnant women even traveled to the United States back then because a sea voyage would take far too long and would be too risky.

So what would be a good solution? Well, since the slavery issue is over, i.e. there are no more ex-slaves still needing citizenship, it is perhaps time to change the 14th Amendment to require birth to an American citizen -- as almost every other country in the world requires.

Of course, the Democrats will call this racist. . . but what don’t they call racist? (yawn) They will call it anti-immigrant, when it’s truly nothing of the sort, it’s anti-linejumper. They will call it anti-Hispanic, which only makes sense if you believe that all Hispanics got here illegally. Some are whining that this will create vague bureaucratic hardships for parents giving birth! As in they would need to provide proof of citizenship. . . like a drivers license. Big whoop. Others hide behind the idea “this won’t deter illegal immigrants,” but that’s just flawed reasoning, i.e. just because laws don’t prevent all murders doesn’t mean we should make murder legal.

The real problem here, however, is that this is probably a gimmick. The current rule resides in the Constitution. Thus, changing it will require an Amendment to the Constitution. That means 2/3 majorities in both chambers of Congress and 3/4 of the states would need to approve this. I can’t see that happening.

I suspect this is really a couple of RINOs desperate to prove that they aren't RINOs without having to actually do anything about it. So what they've done here is latch onto an issue that they know cannot be delivered. This gives them something deeply conservative to pound home to prove how conservative they really are without any fear that they will ever be called upon to actually pass it into law. That’s why it should not surprise you that Lindsey Grahamnesty and John McCain have signed up for this. Kyl isn't a RINO, but he seems to like trying to change the Constitution, having tried it before with both Graham and Diane Feinstein. Sessions is a strong conservative and has been battling illegal immigration, so that's probably why he's joined in this.

I don’t trust the motives of McCain or Graham, nor do I think this will work because of the impossible hurdles it must pass. I'm hoping it does. I really do. It’s time that this country fixed its immigration system and a good start would be to stop this practice of anchor-babying. But at this point, this looks like nothing more than the proverbial carrot tied to the string hanging just out of reach of the donkey, and that this intended simply to be dangled in front of us but never delivered.

But who knows? Maybe the RINOs have miscalculated? Maybe the people are upset enough about this issue that it will gain traction and eventually become law?

Wouldn't that be ironic, if the RINOs actually did something right?