Musings on Immigration

Like the proverbial Whack-A-Mole game of our youthful carnival weekends, the anti-immigration crowd once again trumpets this unicorn as a solution to America’s undocumented immigration problem. Most recently Louisiana Senator David Vitter (he of prostitute fame ) seeks to eliminate what some call “birthright” citizenship.  I have blogged on this before, because this issue pops up each year, usually with a politician facing a primary, as a way to gin up support from the margins of the GOP. "Birthright citizenship" is a derogatory way of saying the following: If you are born in the United States, you are a citizen by right of birth in the United States. This was not always the case in America, at least as it applied to African Americans or Native Americans. It took the Civil War, and the 14th Amendment, to ensure that anyone born in the United States “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” is a United States Citizen. Since at least 1994, when Congressman Bob Stump...

I originally posted this at the A ILA Leadership Blog. The next goal of the anti-immigration crowd is to eliminate what some call “birthright” citizenship. This is a derogatory way of saying the following: If you are born in the United States, you are a citizen by right of birth in the United States. This was not always the case in America, at least as it applied to African Americans or Native Americans. It took the Civil War, and the 14 th Amendment, to ensure that anyone born in the United States “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” is a United States Citizen. Have no doubt about it, despite what you will read below, the anti-immigrant movement, including folks like new Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce , and new Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach have plans in the works to try to destroy this fundamental and well settled constitutional issue. For folks like Pearce and Kobach (see the picture above from his campaign website) the overriding concern is not the rule of...