Well, Now

Seems as though there’s a teeny hole in the Constitution after all:

Twenty-five Republican attorneys general have filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court, challenging birthright citizenship.

“The idea that citizenship is guaranteed to everyone born in the United States doesn’t square with the plain language of the Fourteenth Amendment or the way many government officials and legal analysts understood the law when it was adopted after the Civil War.

“If you look at the law at the time, citizenship attached to kids whose parents were lawfully in the country. Each child born in this country is precious no matter their parents’ immigration status, but not every child is entitled to American citizenship. This case could allow the Supreme Court to resolve a constitutional question with far-reaching implications for the States and our nation.”

I have to say that this little feature always nagged at me (despite being a one-time immigrant myself).  The idea that anyone born in the U.S. had automatic citizenship seemed on its face to be unreasonable — I mean, I think that we are the only country in the world that allows for this in our legal system.  (There might be a couple of others, but I suspect that these might be countries where nobody wants to live anyway.)

Whatever, I’d like to see this whole “anchor baby” situation disappear.  The child should be a citizen of the home country of either the mother or the father (if known).  If nobody knows who the father is (a regrettably-common feature of modern-day life) and the mother were to die during or soon after childbirth, then I might be prepared to accept automatic citizenship for the baby, if only for humanitarian reasons.

Anyway, I’m glad to see that the issue may soon be resolved one way or the other.  I’ll leave it to your imagination to figure out who might oppose this initiative by the various attorneys-general.