By BOB BIRD
Not everything is spelled out specifically in the U.S. Constitution. When it was written, there were certain understandings in common law already in place. It takes good historians and lawyers to know exactly what those understandings were.
Perhaps the most important one was “natural-born” citizen, especially as it applied to qualifications for the presidency. As such, natural-born citizen in 1787 meant that both your parents were already citizens. However, some have argued that only the father needed to be, but there is no question it required at least your Dear Old Dad.
It was World Net Daily that actually brought this up regarding Barack Obama being properly natural born in order to qualify for the presidency. If you are old enough to recall, the whole squeal was whether or not he was born in Kenya or Hawaii.
WND called it a “wrong premise,” but it was a bridge-too-far for most conservatives in Congress and in conservative media. The point was buried soon afterwards.
You also might recall that there was a typical red herring brought out at the same time about John McCain, since he was born to a military family that was stationed in the Canal Zone.
How absurd this question becomes can be seen right away: It is all right for the media to question the natural-born citizenship of the son and grandson of naval admirals while on duty serving their country, but is not politically correct to question the natural-born status of Obama, Harris, or so-called “anchor babies”?
But it served its purpose in deflecting attention from the true problem of Obama. Since he escaped authentic scrutiny, the new precedent changed, all to the benefit of Kamala Harris, neither of whose parents were citizens when she was born.
If Obama’s true father was Barack Obama, Sr., then he would not have been eligible, according to the 1787 common law. However, I believe his real father was ultra-Marxist pornographer and leftist Frank Marshall Davis, an American citizen. Look up his image, as well as Obama, Sr., and place them alongside Barry Soetoro (another alias for our former president) and come to your own conclusions.
But that would have been more damaging to Obama, Jr., for it would have opened up the allegation of a fraudulent biography, and no accusations of “racism” would have helped his cause.
So, what is birthright citizenship? One must first study the operative element of the post-Civil War 14th Amendment. I have previously written articles on its fraudulent approval, which violated Article V of the Constitution, but since few people want to go there, this article will take it on its face value. Here is the appropriate clause:
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.
This was meant to apply to the freed slaves. Period.
Thus, if we accept “original intent,” the 14th Amendment does not apply to criminals who sneak across our borders, deliver a baby, and use them to be “anchored” as U.S. citizens.
But, of course, “original intent” is one side of a contentious coin, the other being “current interpretation”, which means that the Constitution is a “living document”, and can mean whatever the majority of justices on the Supreme Court say it means.
Thus, like so many propaganda slogans, such as “People’s Democratic Republic” or “Women’s Clinic for Reproductive Health,” they mean the exact opposite of what the superficial title indicates. Ergo, a “living constitution,” if it can mean anything you want, is not living at all, but dead. Quite dead.
There are statutes that intend to take care of the nuances of constitutional directives. Constitutions are not meant to be legislation, but merely guidelines. However, of all our amendments, the 14th is so tiresomely long that it amounts to virtual legislation, an indication that its application was troublesome to many at the time of its adoption … which it certainly was throughout the North (the South was being illegally prevented any representation during the 14th Amendment’s tour through Congress.)
Here are some hypotheticals which I once posed before an INS bureaucrat who agreed to talk via speaker phone to one of my constitutional law classes, sometime in the 1990s. It is no guarantee that he was speaking accurately, or that his answers are still relevant (due to court cases or legislation), and neither is my own memory a guarantee.
Question: A woman sneaks across the U.S. border, delivers a baby, is caught and deported with her son. Does this child possess U.S. citizenship?
Answer: Yes, but he would need to have documents proving his citizenship, and he would not be accepted into the U.S. until his 21st birthday, or unless his mother was subsequently legally admitted sometime before his 21st birthday.
Question: Would this person be eligible to someday run for president?
Answer: Yes. (As might be expected, the agent did not understand “original intent”.)
Question: If a tourist is vacationing in the U.S. and delivers a baby, is that baby entitled to U.S. citizenship?
Answer: No.
Confirmed here: The State Department’s 2020 rule change made it more difficult for birth tourism companies to continue operations. The amended rule confirmed “that travel to the United States with the primary purpose of obtaining U.S. citizenship for a child by giving birth in the United States is an impermissible basis for the issuance of a B nonimmigrant visa.”
Question: A diplomat and his family enter the U.S. and a baby is born, outside of the embassy grounds of the diplomat. Is this child entitled to U.S. citizenship?
Answer: No. Here’s why.
Question: So, apparently there are exceptions to the claim that merely being born in the U.S. is sufficiently adequate for “birthright citizenship.” How, then, are these exceptions determined: by statute, bureaucracy or court cases? And why would a person who entered the country legally, as in a tourist or a diplomat, be denied, while a criminal would not?
Answer: I’m afraid I cannot answer that question until I research it myself (and this was in the days before the internet.)
It should be obvious, then, that the usual dogpile on President Donald Trump’s policy regarding birthright citizenship is merely another example of Trump Derangement Syndrome by the Democratic Party’s mouthpiece, the legacy media.
Whatever the judiciary might rule, the fact is that, for too long, the U.S. has been a total chump regarding the 14th Amendment’s application. President Trump deserves to be supported in this effort of cleansing our government from leftist policies whose ultimate goal is to destroy our sovereignty.
Bob Bird is former chair of the Alaskan Independence Party and the host of a talk show on KSRM radio, Kenai.
What’s sad is obama personally boasting in at least two YT videos that he was in fact, actually born in Kenya, and the idea of being born in the USA to be president is dead.
You apparently don’t understand satire.
Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. Not to defend Obama, but to name you a liar. Why do you lie so much, Jeanette?
As Mr. Bird pointed out in this article, while Obama was born in Honolulu, his father was a man from Chicago who was in his late 50’s when he impregnated Obama’s teenage mother in the fall of her senior year of high school. To escape the scandal, Obama’s mother was sent to Hawaii to have her baby the next summer. Therefore, Obama, despite the mularky about Kenya, was born in the US.
Regardless of your opinion, you need to go back and look at case law. And if you do, you’ll find that this has been ruled on multiple times not recently either I’m talking about in the 1800s when Chinese immigrants bore a child on US soil
And return to China for a short time. And the now grown son returned to America and was denied entrance. The Supreme Court said at that time to open the doors and let him in.
You can be disappointed by their decision, but you have to live with it.
Thank you! This contributor has an axe to grind and leaves out the inconvenient fact of the prior testing birthright citizenship (United States v. Wong Kim Ark). Consider the last paragraph of the opinion piece, dear readers, and…behold the blowhard.
If my neighbors sled dog shows up on my property uninvited then gives birth to puppies, she is still not my dog and they are not my puppies.
The united states supreme court says they are.
Specifically, in 1898, The US vs Wong Kim Ark. It’s important to follow the law and not try to rewrite your own laws depending on the day of the week.
You premise does not apply, since Wong’s parents were Chinese immigrants that had lived in the US for 20 years prior to his birth and had remained US residents and citizens, even when he attempted to return to the US. This is a huge departure from what the current administration is opposing. The 1898 ruling will not hold up as a opposing argument to the administration’s goal to return the 14th amendment to it’s original intent when it is taken up by SCOTUS.
Greg, you missed the key point of Mr. Bird’s comment. An ILLEGAL alien who gives birth on American soil is a CRIMINAL by US law. The Chinese immigrant in your reference case was not an ILLEGAL alien. Your point is moot. The lack of consistency in the application of the 14th amendment is the problem being discussed here. Oddly, the “uneducated” opinions in these very comments make the most sense. -Cheers
You misspelled the bottom line. The child was dropped on American soil. It’s over.
He didn’t make a valid point. He claimed something about the 14th amendment been written because of slavery. And that may, or may not be true. But the hundreds of other countries that have the same law werent affected by slavery, what say you to that?
Greg
Why that’s what your crooked Biden regime did?
Sounds like you’re for double justice.
Just one. Constitutional Law.
Greg: You are a worthy person to disagree with. Case “law” is NOT law. Laws are passed after tortuous sessions, compromises, committees, subcommittees, floor amendments, etc. Otherwise, why go through all that if it can be cancelled out by a tyrannical judiciary?
Puh-leez read Federalist #78: “It [the judicial branch] may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.”
I don’t argue that Case “law” is now accepted as operative, but the entire point of the article rests on CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, not case “law”. Case “law” should survive only when a judicial opinion is passed, and the executive LIKES the decision, and so enforces it.
But it has morphed into what Ronald Reagan once said: “Well, my oath of office requires that I enforce all supreme court decisions, even those I disagree with.” It was a nonsense statement, because his oath requires enforcement and defense of the Constitution, not court decisions!
And Pat Buchanan personally agreed with me: that all this is a false premise that mistakenly is followed, even by most self-proclaimed conservatives. Getting people back to think constitutionally has to begin somewhere, and I am far from being alone.
Case law is always used to set presidence. It’s the only way to argue previouse decisions. It keeps us honest.
Greg, you mean when one Judge lies and another Judges swears to it?
As he writes in the last paragraph, he doesn’t care what the judiciary decides, the US people are chumps with respect to Amendment #14. This isn’t a dialogue.
In the not too distant future SCOTUS will tell both Bird and Trump you cant change the Constitution by fiat
Exactly. Someone with common sense and unbiased.
Common sense says there are only two genders, male and female. Common sense also says that drag queens should not be allowed to tell stories to little children. Common sense also says that children should not be the ones to decide if they are ready for transitioning surgeries. If we followed the constitution and the laws of America, common sense says the babies of these illegal immigrants would have never been born here to begin with!
That’s water under the bridge. The deed is done.
One nation under God! No one is going to hell for your deeds!
Common sense goes across the bridge, only trolls now about things beneath.
You mean only SCOTUS can do that? “We the people” still does not read “We the judges”.
But I don’t think the article has penetrated your head. The idea is to obey the constitution in its original intent. You obviously believe in “current interpretation”. So, once again I will ask: Why have a constitution if its meaning can be changed?
It’s always challenged.
Think about the Second that references “the militia”. When written, the militia was the people; it was the citizenry. Clearly when written, the Fourteenth was intended to address the issue of black people who had been miss classified by the horrible Dred Scott decision. The notion that a non citizen could give birth in our country and the child would become a citizen was never contemplated because that was not the purpose of the birthright citizenship clause in the Fourteenth Amendment.
Times change. If you don’t like it, perhaps you can get an ammendment started. Do it legally instead of like a tyrant.
Bob Bird, A living Constitution is not unlike if we had ” living rules” in a Poker Game. You know, where my pair ofc3′ and Ace high beats your three Jacks!
Children born in the US are granted full rights and citizenship regardless of the immigration status of the parents. Since we are not barbarians, we aren’t right???? The welfare of the child takes presidence and the parents can stay with the child. They can apply for a green card or whatever, but do not themselves become citizens without going through the process. Sorry haters. You loose bigly on this one…..
It’s the law. Your stupid leader lead you down the wrong hole.
Your powerful leader and the smartest deceiver of them all (Satan) lead you down the right hole.
Nice try. I will pray for you.
Ok, as promised, I got the request put in. It’s in your hands now.
Bob Bird,
You’re clearly compromised due to your unironic use of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Anything you surmise or opine regarding anything law based that involves Trump should be taken with a grain of salt. This attack on birthright citizenship doesn’t lower the cost of eggs, address increased homelessness; nor does this article mention how Trump, himself, benefitted from the 14th Amendment in his own life.
Maybe you should focus your efforts on the parallels of the Trump Administration with those of the rise of the Socialist party in Germany in 1939. Or why the developed world countries are having anti-fascist protests in light of the election of Trump and his relationship with Elon Musk.
Good point.
Perhaps you could provide us with examples other countries that have a provision for birthright citizenship; i.e. that grant citizenship to children born in their country when the parents have no linkage to that country.
I’m not sure there is another country that has such a provision, which is one of the many reasons America is the greatest country on the planet.
There are plenty.
Look it up. I understand ever country in the western hemisphere has it and some in Europe have versions. Have at it.
.in Brazil it is called jus soli. It’s like ours. Trump is a liar. A big fat one. Don’t believe a word that he says. When he was signing this stupid thing, He said, no other country has it and he was lying. They all do. I guess he thinks the american people are stupid. Forty nine point eight percent that voted for him definitely are.
All other countries have birthright citizenship?
You call Trump a liar, when you yourself are lying. You call people stupid, when you yourself say stupid things.
There are over 190 countries in the world, a little over 30 have birthright citizenship. How many of those countries have it written into their Constitution? You say all countries have it while Trump says no other countries do, by any measure he’s much closer to being right than you are.
You’re splitting hairs in your desperate attempt. I did say every country in the western hemisphere and most in Europe have some form of it. Obviously hundreds of countries was a hyperbolic phrase. And remember, I don’t even know if there are hundreds of countries in the world.
What you said is right up there^. But I will quote you for your convenience
“He said, no other country has it and he was lying. They all do.”
There are 195 countries in the world, 33 have unconditional birthright citizenship. Care to guess how many have unconditional birthright citizenship embedded in their Constitution the way we do?