08/11/2010
The hysteria amongst the Open-Borders crowd over the idea of eliminating Birthright Citizenship continues to build at an astonishing pace. They are really alarmed. The Wall Street Journal has mobilized ethnic entrepreneur Linda Chavez: The Case For Birthright Citizenship August 11, 2010
Presumably no one takes seriously any more the pretence that Linda Chavez is Hispanic — or conservative. Quite apart from her parentage being half Anglo and heritage more so, she has been married for over 40 years to Christopher Gersten, an American Jew, and first came to prominence as a operative at a teacher union, in effect a Democratic Party auxilary. She is really just another NeoConservative.
Chavez has been for years serving as a well-remunerated procuress for the Cheap Labor Lobby. From time to time she has functioned as an uncharacteristically thuggish Journalistic Enforcer for the Treason Lobby as well
Today’s Op-Ed is basically a celebration of the 1898 US v. Wong Kim Ark case, which is the current rationale for giving citizenship to the children of illegal aliens — although actually the plaintiff was the son of legal residents.
In reality, this case, an early example of blatant Supreme Court judicial legislation, is proof that the 14th Amendment did not envisage birthright citizenship.
The Court, wanting to show favor to the unpopular Chinese immigrant community, did so by evading the letter and spirit of the Amendment. Instead it gave supremacy to traditional English Common Law. As Nathaniel Parker said in Weigh Anchor! Enforce the Citizenship Clause
The majority opinion is a lengthy disquisition on the English Common Law understanding of citizenship and how it is acquired, and how those common law antecedents made their way into the laws of the United States. The Court preferred the older English view of jus soli birthright citizenship, which had allowed the Crown to assert jurisdiction over anyone born in England, no matter who his parents were …
The majority gave short shrift to the intent of the Citizenship Clause’s framers. They ignored the fact that, by putting the Citizenship Clause, qualified by the jurisdiction phrase, into the Constitution, the country had deliberately superseded the common law view..
. In Wong Kim Ark, the Supreme Court treated the jurisdiction phrase of the Citizenship Clause as almost a nullity.
(The British, of course, faced with the changed circumstances of the modern world, had no difficulty altering their citizenship law. The United Kingdom is not an Absolute (Judicial) Monarchy.)
Numerous essays are floating around at present attempting to torture the language and colloquy of the 14th Amendment to get them to justify Birthright Citizenship. The 1898 Court, in an era of greater intellectual integrity, saw that it could not be done. So they reached elsewhere.
Chavez completely avoids the real public policy questions — the Birth Tourism scandal, the outrage that, for instance,
one-quarter of state welfare payments and food stamps issued in Los Angeles County go to children whose parents are in the U.S. illegally
as I noted earlier this year.
This is because she and her employers dread the public outrage these facts generate. And they do not care about the ordinary Americans who pay the price.
For the Neoconservatives and their brethren on the left, the transformation of America into a Majority/Minority polity (which abolishing Birthright Citizenship would hugely slow) is their Birthright.
Nothing can be permitted to interfere with the process.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.