Ok, today we are going to look at probably the most powerful and
tough part of the Trump plan on immigration. It is the issue of
birthright citizenship. Let us critique.
Ending Birthright citizenship: Trump does not want to give
automatic citizenship to children born to illegal immigrants if they were born
in the United States. He basically said that they go home with their
parents no matter what, rather than have them get United States benefits with
the newborns being used as tools to allow the parents to stay in the United
States. It should be noted that the United States is one of a select few
countries in the world that have any version of birthright citizenship.
So should we agree that the kids get deported with the parents?
Well it is not that simple. The 14th
amendment says that:
"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"
As such, many would interpret that as
anyone simply born here can and will be a citizen. But the amendment was
put forth for former black slaves who were originally considered property.
It made sure that their children would be considered citizens. It also
insures that legal immigrants and their children and children adopted from
overseas will be considered citizens too. It really was never meant to be
applied to people just visiting or here illegally. However, court rulings
and legal policy and law have applied it to them anyway. As to whether
this is good or bad, I do not really care. I personally think that our
immigration system should be set up to adjust for this interpretation, but I am
a voice in the peanut gallery. But Trump wants to subvert the
constitution. He will either ignore this interpretation, or try to force
a vote to change the constitution which is nearly impossible based on the
process (a very good thing). However, we do not want the amendment
changed as that could lead to a bad alteration which can cause issues with
future immigrants where actual citizens can be deported like with the communist
sympathizers who were kicked out of the United States in a flagrant disregard
for the U.S. constitution back during the cold war. As such, we should
invest time, effort and money to do battle in court to settle the issue in the
right way. A battle that will end up in the Supreme Court to hopefully settle
the issue once and for all.
Conclusion: It is a very bad idea to try to
alter the constitution without some clear wording and that need not be
re-interpreted by some judge in a courtroom. Also, I do not trust
congress to amend the constitution on just this one issue alone. I want
the court battle that will really settle the issue in the right way. You
cannot take the easy way out for we already discriminated against every
immigrant minority in the country at one time or another, and we also
discriminated against religions, ideology and race. Adjusting the
constitution in any way may give an open door, through the alterations wording,
to racists and other people to kick out undesirables that they believe are
harmful. Obviously that is a dangerous proposition, and Trump saying he
will willingly subvert the constitution (at least how I heard it) also is
dangerous for the constitution then becomes meaningless leading to mass
deportations anyway. So I cannot support Trump on any part of his plan
for the dangerous that arise from it.
No comments:
Post a Comment