Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Birthright citizenship needs fixing

What President Trump plans to change about birthright citizenship is a mystery.

As House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., noted, "You cannot end birthright citizenship with an executive order," and the Constitution does, broadly, prescribe citizenship for babies born in the U.S. But Democrats and their media allies risk overreaching if they think the public agrees with their absolutist view on the matter.

The question is, ought we to confer citizenship to every baby born here.

Birthright citizenship is an idea that has been present in law from around the time of America's founding and was planted in the Constitution in the 14th Amendment, where its purpose was to grant citizenship to former slaves.

That's the easy part, and after setting that aside as obvious, the case for birthright citizenship as a policy matter, rather than as a constitutional one, gets much weaker.

Illegal immigrants shouldn't win citizenship for their children because they managed to sneak in and give birth here.

On the question of parents illegally in the country, there's a good argument the Constitution does not provide birthright citizenship.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/birthright-citizenship-needs-fixing

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