Went to a lecture about tracing your ancestor’s movements around the country last night. During the Q&A, I asked what the response time is for inquiries to the Immigration Department, as I ordered an index check two months ago. He said the lead time is long, because researching the requests is not a priority, the staff is small, and they are flooded with requests. He said I will receive a response, eventually.
Meanwhile, The L&Ses in DC are trying to hold a short term government funding bill hostage to passage of a more extreme law for verifying voter “eligibility”. Couple that law with an assertion currently being made that you can only be a citizen by birth if you parents were citizens at the time of your birth. The logical extension of that thinking is your parents could not be citizens by birth if their parents were not citizens at that time, and so on, back through the decades/centuries.
Steve…glad to have started getting papers in order a few years ago.
If you have naturalization records for the first generation, and the next gen were born after the first gen were naturalized, I suppose you would be golden. That is what I am working on with the “index check” from the Immigration Department, for my father’s side of the family. I’m shooting through a pretty narrow time frame. iirc, there is a break point in the records in 1906. My dad was born in 1912, and the parent’s names on the birth certificate appear to be the Anglicized form that they were changed to at the time of naturalization. One of his older brothers was born in Canada, in 1909, so I take his birth as pre-naturalization.
My maternal grandfather was born in Illinois, but you need to be the person on the certificate, or a parent, or guardian, to obtain a copy of the certificate.
I have told my maternal grandmother’s story before. After considerable research, my aunt built a circumstantial case that my grandmother had been kidnapped, as a small child, by a woman who then skipped across the state line, into Michigan, then married my great grandfather, under an assumed name, and passed off the little girl she kidnapped, as her own. My mother and aunt had both known Jenny, later in her life, and agreed, that Jenny was the sort of person who was very capable of carrying out a scenario like that.
Before 1900, records get pretty sketchy. People were not all in a central database. People could pretty much be who they said they were, and there was no reliable way to prove otherwise.
The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees birthright citizenship, also known as jus soli (“right of the soil”), to almost all people born in the United States.
This would require a change the United States Constitution.
Two-thirds of both houses of Congress can vote to propose an amendment; just to put a proposal forward. That doesn’t even ratify it.
Does it, really? The Civil Rights Act of 1866, which slightly predates the 14th, has a couple exclusions to birthright citizenship:
Be it enacted . . . , That all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States; and such citizens, of every race and color, without regard to any previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude,…
So, if your parents are British Subjects, but they squirt you out in the US, you are not a US citizen.
Like any other dispute in law, the question would need to be adjudicated. SCOTUS could easily hold that the exclusions explicitly stated in the Civil Rights Act, are implicit in the 14th Amendment. The court could continue that, if Congress wants to remove those exclusions, it will need to pass an amendment to the amendment, explicitly removing those exclusions. Would Congress, and a majority of states, double down on giving citizenship, to the supposed millions of “anchor babies” in the country, in the current climate?
Well, that is not the constitutional amendment:
The only thing that hold jurisdiction is the Actual Radified Constitutional Amendments and it reads, 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. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States
Basically if you pay your taxes you’re subject to the jurisdiction of the United States of America…
End of Discussion
Those two clauses are not mutually exclusive. People born in the US, but not subject to the jurisdiction of the US would be the spawn of diplomats, who are granted immunity from US law. “Not subject to a foreign power” is an entirely different kettle of fish. As a for instance, a foreign person, in the US, can be drafted into military service by his home country, while a US citizen cannot be drafted into military service by another country.
Recall what the oath of US citizenship says:
“I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.”
Does US law allow for “dual citizens”, with divided loyalties? The oath, as stated in US law, clearly calls for explicit renouncing of any other citizenship, to be a USian.
A party could argue the exclusion in the Civil Rights Act was implicitly included in the 14th amendment. The case would need to be litigated, ending up before SCOTUS. Keep in mind some of the nutty things the court has said in recent years, things like bribes being “protected free speech”, kickbacks, even if obtained with menaces, are “gratuities”, and only Congress has authority to enact specific regulations, even though Congress explicitly delegated that authority to an administrative agency. Maybe I will have received the information from the Immigration Department by then, showing that my paternal grandparents were naturalized citizens before my father was born. :^)
Can I stop filing taxes then if they don’t considering me a citizen anymore given I wasn’t born there nor live there?
“no taxation without representation” was a nice slogan, but immigrants, both legal and illegal, in the US, pay USian taxes, without citizenship rights.
The Amendment to the Constitution , whether it be the 13th or the 14th overrides and excludes any statues or acts written before. 13th Amendment nullifies the Emancipation Proclamation, as well as the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850. As well, any declarations, or laws or writs of judgment (statements even in the constitution) are nullified or amended by the 14th Amendment. You don’t read a declaration or ruling into the 14th Amendment that existed previously to the ratification of the 14th Amendment. It’s the other way around.
A party could argue that the Missouri Compromise was implicitly included in the 13th Amendment.
Prior to the 14th Amendment, common law defined citizenship. Under common law, citizenship was determined using the principle of jus soli. There is no definition in the Constitution except Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 which supports the principle of jus soli.
an amendment to the amendment, explicitly removing those exclusions. Would Congress, and a majority of states, double down on giving citizenship, to the supposed millions of “anchor babies” in the country, in the current climate? Steve
In the current climate the House can barely put together a majority vote without bringing the vote to the floor four or five times. The Congress can’t even get a majority vote to address the budget, health care, immigration, foreign aide, infrastructure spending, FEMA, EPA, etc. The congress hasn’t been able to amend the constitution in 53 years except to give themselves a pay raise.
I personally support the citizenship of children born here to undocumented workers, “anchor babies” is derogatory and demeaning. I support DACA which the congress can’t even bring the bill to the floor.. Somehow you think that both houses of congress can put together a 2/3rds vote which is ludicrous.
As I said, since the 14th does not explicitly remove the exclusions in the Civil Rights Act, the matter would need to be adjudicated.
I agree. Congress could never get it’s poo in a group long enough to do it, let alone a majority of the states. That is the idea. Like when SCOTUS opened the back door to nearly complete deregulation of everything, by overturning the Chevron decision, and saying Congress needs to pass every regulation, rather than delegate the authority to an administrative department. Congress could never handle that job either, therefore, we are headed to zero regulation.
The 14th Amendment is the Only constitutional definition of citizenship. It stands alone. It’s like saying, “since the 13th ammendment does not explicitly remove the Missouri Compromise, the matter would have to be decided by the Supreme Court.”
You clearly don’t know what you’re talking about. Not to mention, ratification of a constitutional amendment requires more than a simple majority of States.
A similar argument was made about section 3 of the 14th, that it was self-executing.
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Nope. SCOTUS held that, under Section 5, only an act of Congress can exclude someone from office, because they tried to overthrow the government. If Section 3 can only be enforced by act of Congress, section 1 can only be enforced by act of Congress. What act of Congress, other than the Civil Rights Act of 1866, defines who is a citizen?
You might want to read the opinion of the court where Supreme Court ruled that states cannot disqualify former President Donald Trump from the ballot in Colorado.
1st, the court didn’t say anything about memebers of Congress. The court didnt use the any previous statutes or acts of Congress in their decision. The decision was based soley on reading the ammendment. The President is not named in the 14th Amendment. Therefore based on the reading of Section 5 of the 14th Amendment only Congress can enforce the 14th Amendment not States.
The argument resides in the fect that reading of Section 5 of the 14th Amendment states can not independently decide on the rights of citizenship. This was a case of States’ Rights over Federal rights.
Read the 14th Amendment, the office of the President is not named, therefore the court used the 14th Amendment to read its ruling, not the Missouri Compromise or some such Congressional Act.
Seems that is what I said, SCOTUS said it would take an act of Congress to enforce the provisions of the 14th amendment.
The section does not specifically name a lot of offices and office holders, because the amendment would be hundreds of pages long. And, even if it did, the holder of an office created after the amendment was passed by Congress would insist he is exempt because he and his office are not specifically named. It’s a BS argument, authored by a highly ideological court, determined to split hairs and twist words to fit it’s agenda.
Unfortunately, “we the people” have no control over the court.