Tea Party Brings Birthright Citizenship House Floor
So while the President and the leaders of congress were working to avert a government shutdown in the past few days the Tea Party was launching an assault on the Constitution.
According to an ABC News report a bill was filed in the House of Representatives that challenges the birthright citizenship that is guaranteed in the 14 the amendment of the Constitution.
Sens. David Vitter of Louisiana, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Mike Lee of Utah and Jerry Moran of Kansas say their bill requires the federal government to limit automatic citizenship to children born to at least one parent who is a citizen, legal resident, or member of the military.
It’s the tired “anchor baby” shtick; the idea that immigrants come to the United States with the sole purpose of dropping a baby in order to siphon American social services and benevolence.
But the problem with this idea is that most of the undocumented women who have babies in the US are in this country several years before they become pregnant – it’s a rather latent sinister plan.
Another problem is that these babies have to grow to be 21 before they can impose their undocumented parents on the rest of the law abiding, tax paying, American society. It’s not only sinister, it’s impractical.
And then there are the unconsidered consequences: if birthright citizenship is repealed the parents of every child born in the US will have the burden of proving their citizenship. And if the law is retroactive, they’ll have to produce evidence of citizenship for their entire ancestral line going back to the moment of initial immigration. Most anti-birthright people tend to also be constitutional originalists, so the letter of the law is imperative.
And what of the children of the undocumented? What happens to them? Are they to be deported. We’re talking about millions of kids and young adults.
The Pew Hispanic Center estimates 340,000, or 8 percent, of the 4.3 million newborns in U.S. hospitals in 2008 belonged to illegal immigrant parents. In total, 4 million U.S.-born, citizen children of illegal immigrants currently live in the country, according to the study released last year.
But in the end this measure is a waste of time. The proponents of the law can’t change birthright citizenship through legislation. It requires an amendment to the constitution to do what the Tea Party caucus wants to do. And even if they manage to approve the measure it will most certainly be challenged in court.
So this whole thing is pretty much dead in the water.
But with two thirds of both chambers of Congress and three-fourths of all the states needed top amend the document, the change was deemed highly unlikely to pass.
Follow Victor Landa on Twitter: @vlanda
[Photo by Just Taken Pics]
