Immigrants, the Fourteenth Amendment, and You
Written by Guest Contributor: Tired Millennial
Welcome to history class. Let’s start today with talking about the Fourteenth Amendment or better known as the citizenship amendment and/or the equal rights amendment. Let’s start by looking at the language of it. For the sake of brevity (and what this article is focusing on), we’ll only be looking at Section 1:
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.
OK, so that is a lot of legal talk. Let’s go over the point I want to discuss today:
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.
If you are born here or have gone through the process to become a citizen, you are indeed a citizen of the United States and receive all the protections of fellow citizens of the United States.
That means you are subject to U.S. laws but also things such as benefits in your state like pensions, social security, medicare, and so forth. Now, why in the world would we need this to be added? Why is this the Fourteenth Amendment and not say in the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments)?
Well, my friends, that is because of our good old friend of slavery. The Fourteenth Amendment was passed in 1868 and was one of the Reconstruction amendments. See, the Civil War had ended, slaves had been freed, but because of previous laws and rulings of the Supreme Court (Dred Scott v. Sanford, 1857), slaves (or ex-slaves in this case) were not considered citizens of the United States despite being born here, raised here, and used for free labor. Along with the Thirteenth Amendment, which freed the slaves (except in cases where they have been convicted then it it totally OK for some reason), and the Fifteenth Amendment, which gave black men the right to vote, the Fourteenth Amendment was to help give equal rights to the newly freed slaves.
A consequence of this amendment came that people born of immigrants in the United States would then become citizens. The Supreme Court upheld this in United States v. Wong Kim Ark in 1898 since this nasty law called the Chinese Exclusion Act had denied citizenship to Chinese immigrants. It was concluded that the United States could not deny citizenship to anyone born in the United States.
Now, why bring all of this up? President Trump has mentioned creating an executive order to overturn this provision because of the idea of anchor babies. Now, many of you may be wondering - can the president do this?
The answer is no. No clickbait here.
The way our Constitution is formatted, and the way it has been treated before, the only way to change or nullify an amendment is another amendment. For example, the Eighteenth Amendment created prohibition or making alcohol illegal. It took another amendment, the Twenty-First Amendment to be exact, in order to overturn prohibition.
The Constitution is meant to be the supreme law of the land, trumping all other laws. If something is unconstitutional, it is void. Therefore, neither the president nor Congress can overturn an amendment. It is a very hard and long process to get an amendment passed, and therefore it is very hard to overturn them.
So, why make the statement? I have two theories:
President Trump is an idiot and does not actually understand how the laws of our country work.
He’s trying to get his base who is afraid of immigrants and change to get behind him and go and vote for Republicans that support him.
Either way, the president may very well pass an executive order limiting immigration. At that point it is up to the courts, our Congress, and ultimately the Supreme Court to knock it down and declare it unconstitutional and shut him down.
Good thing we have all those checks and balances in the different branches of government, and that they are not all controlled by one party who has basically given the president a blank check to do what he wants.
That last paragraph was sarcasm. Go and vote. And fight loud and hard against those who lie to our country over and over again.
