HispanicVista Columnists
The Constitution is what it is
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By
Raoul Lowery Contreras/HispanicVista.com - October 15, 2006
- The Constitution is what it is
- By Raoul Lowery Contreras
Can’t some people read and comprehend the law of the land, and the United States Constitution? Don’t they understand the “supremacy” clause of the Constitution? In a phrase-- federal law trumps local and state law, federal law is supreme in our land.
Specifically, we refer to the arguments that American children born of illegal alien parents should be denied citizenship as defined in the Constitution. Also, that they should be denied benefits other United States citizens receive as a matter of course, and be denied due process and equal enforcement of the law.
For the benefit of the ignorant, the Constitution is clear: Article 1, 14th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, “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…”
Anyone who argues that a child born to one or more illegal alien parents is not a citizen is not only wrong, they are ignorant.
Further, anyone who claims these children are not under the “jurisdiction” of the United States or that their illegal alien parents aren’t under the same “jurisdiction” are also pure unadulterated ignoramuses.
Can illegals aliens be arrested for crimes? Must their children have birth certificates? Must their children produce certificates of vaccination to enter school? Must they have a driver’s license to drive? Must the children attend school as per all laws in all states?
Has the Supreme Court looked at this argument? Yes, it has many times. Let’s begin with the argument that the 14th Amendment only applies to Blacks who were slaves or their children. The Supreme Court dispensed with this argument in the Slaughterhouse Cases in the 1870s.
The Court ruled that laws apply to all, not just certain favored groups regardless of the circumstances or legislative intent. The Supreme Court dispensed with a racial argument involving Mexicans in 1870. The racial element argument that Mexicans were not white, thus not eligible for citizenship as per 1846 federal law was the position of Texas in 1870. The Court dispensed that argument by Texas when the Supreme Court that ruled that a treaty had the force of the Constitution and overruled any congressional law.
The killer Supreme Court decision on the 14th Amendment and its effect came in 1898 in the Wing Kim Ark case. A child born of Chinese immigrants who were not permitted by law to become citizens traveled to China. On his return, he was denied entry back into the USA because his parents were Chinese despite his birth in the United States.
The Court took great pains to elaborate on the history of citizenship in Great Britain, parent of the United States, of British Common Law on the subject and what the laws were in the United States when the country came into being. It detailed dozens of Supreme Court decisions that examined citizenship (starting in 1804) and concluded that even before the 14th, children born in the United States were citizens unless they were born to foreign diplomats, Indians, on foreign ships in American waters or to women accompanying invading military forces.
The huge exception, of course, was the Dred Scott decision that ruled that Africans could not be citizens because they were either property or were African, period. That issue was addressed by the Civil war and was overturned by the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans wearing blue uniforms.
The 14th Amendment was drenched in blood.
To the argument that it applied only to enslaved Africans and their slave children, there is plenty of evidence that the Senate considered foreigners and many quotes exist in the congressional publication of the day that refers to “the strangers among us.” Nonetheless, the arguments rise that only Blacks were covered by the 14th.
Of course, the 14th’s wording alone destroys that argument; to wit: ALL PERSONS BORN OR NATURALIZED in the United States…”
400 years of British and American court decisions and laws and the Constitution of the United States mean nothing to those who raise the question of whether or not the 14th is applicable to today to all children born here. They would garner more support if they applied their faulty thinking to children of convicted felons and murderers and traitors like spies Aldrich Ames and the Walker Family who sold out the United States to Russia for money. They only see Mexicans.
They only see Mexicans. Then they concoct a term “anchor babies” that define American born children of illegal aliens as something other than a citizen as defined by the Constitution.
- The words themselves are blatant proof that these people, these who use the term “anchor babies” are sheer racists. You see, “anchor babies” are not defined in law or in the Constitution, they simply exist in the minds of people who hate Mexicans and need something to equate to their popular word for those of African descent.
- Contreras’ books, THE ILLEGAL ALIEN: A DAGGER INTO THE HEART OF AMERICA?? and A HISPANIC VIEW OF AMERICAN POLITICS AND THE POLITICS OF IMMIGRATION are available at www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com