If you want to stop an alien parent giving birth on American soil, then restrict their entry. If you want to stop people crossing the border illegally for whatever reason, then tighten the borders. Trying to twist the Constitution into saying things it doesn't to remedy both those issues, is simply not going to end up being constitutional.
Stu makes a valid point, which really highlights how absurdly drafted the 14th Amendment is. I don't see the legal issue to be as clear cut as he does however. In addition, we have recently seen how the Supreme Court is more than willing to apply a tortured interpretation to a law, obamacare, in an attempt to save what the Court saw as the "real" legislative intent. I don't see it as a huge reach for the Court to rule that illegals cannot benefit by violating the law and producing anchor babies, which then can be used as a basis for even more ridiculous chain immigration. The intent of the drafters of the 14th Amendment was clearly to grant citizenship to slaves, not to encourage illegal immigration.
That is a great point AAA. An illegal immigrant just being here is a violation of the law, they are illegally occupying the country, nothing they do while they are here is legal or legitimate. Of course we know the Amendment was not written with the intent that foreigners who give birth here, are having American kids. If a pregnant woman is vacationing here and gives birth, is that baby an American citizen.. i don't think anyone would argue that he/she is, including the parents. Even if the kid is a citizen, the parents are not, so there's another problem. In my view, all illegals should be deported, yes I mean every one of them. They can take their 'American' kids with them or leave them here for a shitty life in foster care.
Yes it is a living document, and there is a process to modify it. That process is not leftist courts 'interpreting' it differently than the people who created it in the first place.
and what do you you do if you and your people just simply don't have the will to close the border anymore?
Thank you very much Arnie, for digging this up. Of course citizenship does not automatically extend to the children of those here illegally, whether born here or not! There should never have been a reasonable doubt about that. I interpreted GWB's remark to be referring to the insanity of interpreting the 14th in a way that would grant citizenship to babies born to those here illegally. That would indeed be insane. The Dream Act was, in my opinion, a reasonable why to resolve the situation were a non-citizen that has lived there entire life in the U.S. can be afforded a path to citizen ship. And it is consistent with the 14th. Why can't we just get on with it, tighten up the borders, do a better job of going after the employers of illegals and move on?
I was living in Nogales when they first tried to "Tighten up the borders, do a better job of going after e verify" and it would have just about destroyed the economy of the whole town. Looks nice on paper when you are far away from it in an office with a computer, but quite a bit different when it is real people, both Mexicans and Americans you are talking about.
These are precisely the considerations that muddy the waters and our laws. This is an example of why the pictures are seldom black, but nearly always gray.