Our New Anahuac

Since 1868 there has been a simple standard for granting US citizenship to certain people.  Since that time, anyone born in the United States was a citizen.  This came about due to the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution.  The main aim of the amendment was to grant full rights to emancipated slaves.  However, there were Chinese immigrants in the US who whose children were also considered as a part of the debate.  Those who voted for the amendment did not want to use race or national origin quotas as a way to establish US citizenship.  They wanted a clear and evenhanded way to grant citizenship to certain people, and the birthright provision was a way to provide it.

The 14^th Amendment to Constitution is now under attack.  Many Republicans, including party leaders, have made comments that the amendment should be reviewed and that children of undocumented people should no longer have automatic citizenship.  In their simplistic view, the children of undocumented workers should not benefit from the so-called crimes of their parents.

Their view is largely fueled by race.   Studies have shown that certain segments of the white population start become uncomfortable when a ten to fifteen percent color line has been crossed.  Latinos make up roughly fifteen percent of the population.

If the Republicans are so insistent on condemning unborn children for the acts of their parents, then perhaps a fair and evenhanded way to review family criminal history would be to repeal citizenship all the way to the time of the Mayflower.  Since children cannot control the acts of their parents before they are born, and since they have no control over the acts of their ancestor, it is only right that we review the acts of both parents and ancestors.

This way we can really see who have committed the greatest criminal acts.  If the forefathers of some of today’s citizens were land thieves, Indian exterminators, illegal slave traders or rebels this could make their ancestors criminal aliens.  Those individuals who have been the children of real criminal aliens can reapply for citizenship after a touchback to their native country. 

We can take family history and touchback status into consideration when we review their new application and we can determine if these people will be a good candidate for citizenship applications, or whether their citizenship should remain in the repealed class.  Granted, this may run afoul of ex post facto prohibitions, so if need be we can apply it to only babies who will be born after this amendment is ratified.

Sure, this might be a costly undertaking, but the application costs for new babies’ citizenship should make up the cost.  Since we will not want to run a deficit on this program, we will have to make sure that we charge enough money to cover the application, genealogy reports and processing.

In the meantime, if only the children of undocumented workers are targeted, this will produce a permanent underclass in this society.  The repeal of the 14^th Amendment will not create an exodus of our twelve million undocumented people.  Instead, it will create a class of people who work all day, but who do not possess certain basic rights which are recognized by the US Constitution.  It will create a system in which a certain class of our people are barred generation to generation from empowering themselves through commerce, community organizing, political speech and electoral participation.  This generational oppression will be encoded into the very document which is supposed to be a beacon of hope for the entire world: the US Constitution.

Imagine a world in which ICE agents are waiting patiently in the maternity ward of hospitals.  How else would one enforce Representative Duncan Hunter’s (R-CA) proposal in which both babies and parents would be deported.

Let me be clear, I am squarely against repealing the Fourteenth Amendment, but if we are going to repeal it, let us look at the ancestors of other crimes besides illegal entry.  Let us reconsider the citizenship of the ancestors of those who have created some of the worst crimes in human history.  After all, such a policy would not be race-based.  It would be behavior-based, just like they tell us about immigration policy..  That illegal slave traders, land thieves and Indian exterminators happen to be white is incidental.  The idea would be to evenhandedly cleanse our society of the ancestors of law breakers.

In the end, it is unlikely that repeal to the Fourteenth Amendment will gain much momentum.  It is an election sideshow.  We should continue to focus on just comprehensive immigration reform until we are victorious.