Defund Sanc Cities and Stop Anchor Baby Law....now!!

[cnelsen]

Good luck on the Birthright (you'll need a Constitutional amendment).

Nope. The practice of birthright citizenship is entirely a convention. Trump could end it tomorrow with an executive order.

I guess they didn't cover the 14th Amendment when you were in school.

Section 1. 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. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

I'm afraid it takes more than a wave of the magic pen in Trumps hand to get rid of an Amendment.

Apparently, they didn't in my school. At least, the way they did in your school, where, apparently, you were taught the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" means the same thing as "born in the United States". Did the Senate think the Amendment had a better cadence by saying the same thing twice? I think I'll skip your school and go with the senator who actually inserted the "subject to the jurisdiction" language into the amendment specifically to make it clear the amendment did NOT include illegals, and so on. "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." --Senator Jacob Merritt Howard of Michigan

Maybe your school will give you a refund on account of your ignorance?

That may have been the Senators intent. However the language does not make that interpretation absolute. Worse it is not the Senator alone who voted to pass it. Additionally the states that ratified it and thus made it an amendment could have objected and voted no. But they went with that text.

The fourth amendment does not have any exceptions listed like probable cause or reasonable suspicion. It says that you will be secure from search in your person and papers except as authorized by a warrant. Yet we have found many exceptions to this since it was ratified.

At the time the Second was ratified and for a good long time afterwards a private citizen could buy cannon. Anyone could buy Military grade weapons. In time we decided that there were implied restrictions. So I can't buy a naval cannon, nor artillery without specific permission from the government. Forget state of the art.

At the time the 14th was ratified, we were expanding as a nation. Rapidly. We had a whole continent to occupy. Hundreds of thousands of people were headed west. I have every reason to believe that many who supported the 14th did so to expand the population of the nation, the Senators intent not withstanding.

Isn't it reasonable to assume that the congressmen who represented the districts where immigrants tended to settle would want to keep that district of a size?

The amendment allowed rapid Americanization of the immigrants. This was an important factor in the First World War when Germany expected an uprising of German immigrants. Sadly for Foreign Minister Zimmerman the German-Americans were more American than German in their minds.

The phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" was inserted into the language of the Amendment from the Senate floor after acrimonious debate. It was placed immediately following, and distinct from, the phrase "born in the United States". What you are attempting to argue is that Senator Howard fought for and a majority of the Senate voted for the additional language so that the Amendment could simply repeat the phrase "born in the United States".

I'm not sure what expansion and all that has to do with anything. My school taught that the 14th was passed to ensure recently freed slaves had the full rights of citizenship. At the time, the big debate was over what to do about American Indians who occupied sovereign nations within the United States. There was a case that went to the Supreme Court Elk v Nebraska, or something like that, in which a Native American born in Omaha claimed citizenship. The Supreme Court ruled against him because he was subject to the jurisdiction of his tribal nation.