14th Amendment to the U.S Constitution - Fourteenth Amendment - anchor babies and birthright citizenship - original intent - US Constitution, apportionment, slavery slaves citizenship vote
www.14thamendment.us
Post-Civil War reforms focused on injustices to African Americans.
The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868 to protect the rights of native-born Black Americans, whose rights were being denied as recently-freed slaves.
It was written in a manner so as to prevent state governments from ever denying citizenship to Blacks born in the United States.
But in 1868, the United States had no formal immigration policy, and the authors therefore saw no need to address immigration explicitly in the amendment.
The United States did not limit immigration in 1868 when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified.
Thus by definition there were no illegal immigrants and the issue of citizenship for children of those here in violation of the law was nonexistent.
The phrase
"subject to the jurisdiction thereof" was intended to exclude American-born persons from automatic citizenship whose allegiance to the United States was not complete.
With illegal aliens who are unlawfully in the United States, their native country has a claim of allegiance on the child.
Thus, the completeness of their allegiance to the United States is impaired, which therefore precludes automatic citizenship.
Comment:
Birthright Citizenship was never intended for the children of people who illegally entered our country.
It was intended to protect the children of freed slaves.
It is automatically assumed that Birthright Citizenship includes the children of American citizens.
Therefore if neither of the parents of a child who is born on American soil are American citizens, then that child should not be granted birthright citizenship.