Birthright Citizenship

Born down in a dead man's town
The first kick I took is when I hit the ground
--Bruce Springsteen

Several interesting points made here, including observations about birthright citizenship. In the United States, birthright citizenship refers to the notion that any child born on US soil is conferred American citizenship--regardless of whether the child's parents are US citizens or not.

The Fourteenth Amendment ratified in 1868 was intended to modify Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution pertaining to the Three Fifths Compromise. But the amendment contains five sections, and only Section 2 directly applies to the original Three Fifths language. The other sections of the fourteenth amendment must be construed as additions, not changes, to the Constitution because they do not supercede portions of the original legal document.

It is Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment that introduces the concept of birthright citizenship into the constitutional conversation via what now known as the Citizenship Clause:

"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."

The question posed by a portion of this article is whether birthright citizenship is what our founding ancestors intended. There is no explicit language concerning qualifications for citizenshipship in the original Constitution. The closest thing I can reference appears in Article II, Section 1 concerning eligibility for president:

"No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of the President."

One train of thought argues that the framers adopted the English common law notion of birthright citizenship. But English common law focused on subjects, not citizens. Subjects born under the protection of the king owed 'perpetual allegiance' to the king in exchange. Birthright subjectship, not birthright citizenship, was inherited from the feudal system that defined relationships between master and servant.

The Declaration of Independence absolved the American people from feudal allegiance to the crown. This absolution represented a rejection of common law as a basis for citizenship. Instead of perpetual allegiance to a king, 'consent of the governed' is required. No individual can be ruled without his consent. As the author observed, "consent--not the accident of birth--is the basis for American citizenship." [emphasis mine]

The author asks, "Is it plausible--is it even remotely credible--that the Founders, after fighting a revolutionary war to reject the feudal relic of 'perpetual allegiance,' would have adopted that same feudal relic as the ground for citizenship for the new American regime?"

This is a reasonable question. If the answer is 'no,' then it calls into question the true constitutionality of the portion of the Fourteenth Amendment related to birthright citizenship