➡ The Supreme Court is debating the interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, which currently grants citizenship to anyone born in the U.S., regardless of their parents’ legal status. The argument centers on whether children of illegal immigrants are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S., as the amendment states. The outcome could change the longstanding practice of birthright citizenship. President Trump, who attended the court proceedings, supports a stricter interpretation that would exclude children of illegal immigrants from automatic citizenship.
➡ The article discusses the debate over the interpretation of the 14th Amendment and the 1866 Act, which concern citizenship rights in the U.S. The author argues that the original intent of these laws was not to grant citizenship to children of illegal immigrants or those who come to the U.S. just to give birth. The author also expresses concern over the potential for abuse of these laws, such as through “birth tourism” where people come to the U.S. to have children who automatically become citizens. The author hopes the Supreme Court will protect U.S. sovereignty and citizenship from being further eroded.
➡ This text discusses the importance of citizenship for a country’s existence and the role of the Supreme Court in deciding on this matter. It also mentions the efforts of Judicial Watch to uphold immigration laws and protect the nation from those who wish to break these laws. The author encourages the reader to stay informed and engaged by subscribing and liking their video content.

In this day and age where we have millions of non-citizens coming into the United States, the idea that the resulting anchor babies are citizens because of this clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, it just doesn’t hold water with me. So there was big news this week about the issue of birthright citizenship as the Supreme Court held oral arguments about President Trump’s executive order, essentially upholding the notion that unless you’re a legal resident of the United States, your child, if it’s born here, isn’t automatically a citizen. Under the current reading of the Constitution and federal law, which essentially codifies the relevant constitutional provision, an illegal alien can show up here even for ten minutes, have a kid, and the kid becomes a citizen.

And that’s just objectionable to me on its face, and strains credulity that anyone would think that it complies with the Constitution. And the relevant part of the Constitution that the Supreme Court was grappling with was the Fourteenth Amendment. And here’s the section at issue. It’s relatively straightforward. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment, 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. Okay, so what does that mean to you? Okay, there’s a clause there. You’re born or naturalized here and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.

Does that mean that, you know, the provisions typically have been in invading armies and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, the foreign diplomat isn’t subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, etc. But is an illegal alien subject to the jurisdiction of the United States under this reading of the Constitution? That’s the debate, and it’s an important one. And I don’t know how the Supreme Court’s going to come out after this oral argument. I’ll talk about that in a bit. But it’s so important to his credit, President Trump attended a Supreme Court argument in person.

First time a president, according to the reports, has ever done so, which is surprising to me, and I’m glad he did it, because the left was going apoplectic because he’s trying to intimidate the judges or the justices, which is just absurd. He’s the president of the United States. He has a right to attend these proceedings, like any other citizen, and certainly his president. But I’m also glad he did it, and I would recommend every president attend Supreme Court proceedings, either when they’re president or if they’re even thinking about running for president, because the oral arguments are, you know, obviously we get the opinions of the court.

That tells us what they’re thinking in terms of the final thoughts, right? But the only public engagement or operations of the court, in terms of seeing the individual justices ask questions and interact with each other, occur at these oral arguments. And it would seem to me if you’re picking justices to be appointed and confirmed, to be confirmed and appointed, or you’re trying to evaluate how the justices you have picked are performing on the bench, what better way than to show up and watch? And no, listening to it audio is important and gives you some flavor of what goes on, but there’s no substitution for showing up in court and watching the interaction and the questioning.

And I encourage, if you’re here in Washington, D.C., you get to go visit Washington, D.C. I encourage everyone to visit our nation’s capital. The Supreme Court, if they’re in session and conducting arguments, try to get in. It’s easier than you think, and there are ways of looking it up to see how you can attend a Supreme Court argument. I won’t bore you with that. But I am so happy that the president attended the Supreme Court argument. And how did it go? Well, as I said, the core issue is I think the president has the better of the argument, because let’s be clear, it’s a complicated argument.

And I mean, just because I think it’s ridiculous doesn’t mean there’s not, we’ve been doing it for 150 years, it makes life a lot easier, we don’t have to figure out if babies, parents were citizens or not citizens, just babies that are born, we just consider citizens and it just makes things easier. And that may be persuasive policy-wise, it’s not persuasive constitutional-wise. But my point is, this case could go either way. And I think the president has the stronger of the arguments. I think this is a quote from his executive order, it doesn’t matter, because it is the president’s position.

The Fourteenth Amendment, I posted this, has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not subject to the jurisdiction thereof. Consistent with this understanding, the Congress has further specified through legislation that a person born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof is a national and citizen of the United States at birth, 8 U.S.C. 1401, generally mirroring the Fourteenth Amendment’s text. So in theory, Congress could have expanded its citizenship statutorily to include additional people, but they kept it to the line set by the Constitution, or the floor set by the Constitution.

Among the categories of individuals born in the United States and not subject to the jurisdiction thereof, the privilege of United States citizenship does not automatically extend the persons born in the United States when that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth, or when that person’s mother’s presence in the United States at the time of said person’s birth was lawful but temporary, such as, but not limited to, visiting the United States under the auspices of a visa waiver program or visiting as a student worker tourist visa, and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of the said person’s birth.

That makes sense to me. That makes sense to me. And in this day and age where we have millions of non-citizens coming into the United States, the idea that the resulting anchor babies are citizens because of this clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, it just doesn’t hold water with me. Now, you can examine the case more carefully and look at the arguments to and fro as to what subject to the jurisdiction thereof. It seems to me an illegal alien, and this is my common sense approach, an illegal alien avoiding the law to cross the border illegally or overstaying a visa, for example, and residing here knowingly and willfully illegally is rejecting the jurisdiction of the United States necessarily, just as an invading army might be.

They are saying, I am not going to follow your law on lawful presence. I am above that. How on earth is an illegal alien present in knowing violation of the law subject to the jurisdiction thereof under the sense listed here in the Fourteenth Amendment? To me, their presence is a rejection of such jurisdiction. Just because they can be arrested, that’s not what they mean by subject to the jurisdiction. In the context, subject to the jurisdiction is someone who is a non-citizen who is not here lawfully or is here in such a temporary fashion as to make it nonsensical that their child becomes a citizen just because they are passing through.

So we’ve clipped out a few portions of the argument for you, and you can listen to the full argument. I think we’ll put a link below. I think the transcript is probably out there by now as well, so if you don’t want to listen, you can read it. And I encourage you to read it, although this one you may come away more confused than if you just read maybe the government’s briefs and the opponent’s briefs, all of which are accessible. I mean, you don’t have to be a lawyer to figure this out.

You know, you just can be persuaded as a citizen in the end. I mean, in the end, it’s about us, right? I mean, the Constitution is something that can be changed. For example, the Supreme Court finds it to be okay for illegal alien invaders to have children and they get the benefit of citizenship and all the privileges thereof. We can change the Constitution. So this is a fight about how we govern ourselves and our sovereignty, and you have a right to understand it and weigh in, in my view. I’m getting a little heated about this because I think this is the exact opposite of what a serious country would be doing.

And the fact that we’re even at the stage, to me, is just unbelievable. So here’s a section of the argument where Justice Alito was making, I think, some salient points, but to be fair to the ACLU lawyer, he was arguing on behalf of the petitioners, made some good points in back and forth. So here, listen. Not subject to any foreign power is pretty straightforward. So let me give you these examples. A boy is born here to an Iranian father who has entered the country illegally. That boy is automatically an Iranian national at birth, and he has a duty to provide military service to the Iranian government.

Is he not subject to any foreign power? Not within the meaning of the 1866 Act, Justice Alito. And that’s clear from Wong Kim arc, and it’s clear from the debates. What the framers meant by the phrase not subject to any foreign power was referring to the ambassador exception. If it meant what the government contends, basically not a subject of any foreign power, that another country considers you a U. Sanguinis citizen, then lawful permanent residents, all foreign nationals. Ordinary public meaning of that would certainly encompass that boy, would it not? Justice Alito, if you think that the language of the 1866 Act was ambiguous, as Wong Kim arc says, the shift to the language of the 14th Amendment, which is the operative text, certainly clears up any ambiguity.

What I said about a boy born to an Iranian father is true of children born here to parents who were nationals of other countries. If I’m correct, it’s true to a child who’s born here to Russian parents. It’s true to a child who’s born here to Mexican parents. They’re automatically citizens or nationals of those countries and have a duty of military service. It sure seems like that’s a that makes them subject to a foreign power. But again, Justice Alito, that would have meant that the Children of Irish, Italian and other immigrants, which Wong Kim arc refers to in the debate, the framers referred to would not have been citizens either, because if the only test is whether that U.

S. born child is considered a citizen by another country under their U. Sanguinis laws, then no, no foreign nationals children would. In all of those cases, the parents could be naturalized and then the children would be derivatively naturalized when the parents were naturalized. So what they were talking about, I think, was that 1866 citizenship law that was preceded the 14th Amendment that most observers have pointed to as an indication of what they meant by subject to the jurisdiction thereof. And I think in the 1866 law, the language was for citizenship, not subject to foreign power.

I mean, I just am a gas that anyone would think that an illegal alien just coming across the border, residing here illegally, gets the benefit of citizenship for their Children. I don’t buy it. Maybe you buy it. Maybe there are conservative justices that buy it that looks like there might be a few. Here’s Chief Justice Roberts arguing with the Solicitor General, John Sauer. Sauer was referencing, and you’ll hear him referencing, the birth tourism industry where, most infamously, Chinese communists essentially run operations where Chinese citizens come to the United States, have babies, and leave, and their babies become citizens and they get all the benefits and access to the United States while essentially being subjects of China, practically speaking, given their familial ties.

But how is that like not the equivalent of the invading army? I don’t know how anyone could think otherwise. I think the last stat I checked is like at least 35,000 have occurred. I don’t know if it was annually or at least recently, but the numbers are significant. And obviously it’s an inducement for illegal aliens to come here to the United States. If they know if they have children here, whether or not they’re lawfully present, the children become citizens. That would be the biggest inducement to come here illegally for many of their human beings.

Well, who wouldn’t want their children to be U.S. citizens given how great our country is? So here’s the little round-around between the Solicitor General of the United States and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. There are 500, 500 birth tourism companies in the People’s Republic of China whose business is to bring people here to give birth and return to that nation. Having said all that, you do agree that that has no impact on the legal analysis before us? I think it’s, I quote what Justice Scalia said in his Hamdan dissent where their interpretation has these implications that could not possibly have been approved by the 19th century framers of this amendment.

I think that shows that their interpretation has made a mess of the provision. Well, it certainly wasn’t a problem in the 19th century. No, but of course, we’re in a new world now, where 8 billion people are one plane ride away from having a child as a U.S. citizen. Well, it’s a new world. It’s the same constitution. Yeah, with all due respect to the Chief’s point, it doesn’t answer, he’s not answering the question. Does that language result in the absurd notion that those 500 tourist agencies in China can gain citizenship in this abusive manner, invasive manner? And I think John Sauer has the better of the argument that the writers of the 14th Amendment, that’s not what they were planning on.

Now, there’s a Supreme Court opinion that overruled another Supreme Court opinion that said otherwise, suggesting that illegal aliens here could be citizens, or their children could be citizens if they’re born here. Well, the argument that, just so you know, generally, the Wang Ark opinion that’s referenced repeatedly, does it say it as directly as its defenders suggest? So I don’t know how this decision’s going to hang out, go out in the end. I don’t know what the outcome’s going to be. I have no clue based on what I read about the hearing, what I listened to, what I read.

Now, what I found interesting is that many thought going into the argument that the President was going to lose big time, that it was going to be a rout. Well, it didn’t turn into a rout because the ACLU received as many tough questions as President Trump’s lawyer did, the Solicitor General. So it’s going to be closer, but many are predicting that President Trump’s a position on this case, and I think the most constitutional position on this case won’t win out. But on the other hand, I guess hope springs eternal, right? I just don’t know that the Supreme Court is willing to say, or at least there’s a majority of the court willing to say, that someone like Joe Biden can let 20 million people into the United States, and they’re here illegally, and any of them who have children, their children get to be citizens because they’re, quote, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.

It just doesn’t make any sense. That’s the fair reading of the Constitution. And to me, to kind of cement that in a Supreme Court opinion would be extreme. I think it would be an extremist position to say that, to make that type of pronouncement. Now, the Supreme Court will say, that’s what we’re paid to do. I’m like, well, no, you’re not. You’re not paid to make a pronouncement with certainty in an area in the lease which is uncertain. I mean, as a jurist, you could look at the 14th Amendment. Let’s bring that up. I mean, to be fair, even the people who don’t know what it means, it’s like all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, you could say, look, I don’t have enough information as to what that means.

So therefore, I’m not going to rule one way or the other. I don’t know what it means. This is where not being a lawyer, I’d be interested to know what the constitutional lawyers think of that position. It’s like, I don’t know, right? Or you could be, I guess my point is, I don’t, because I’m not sure what it means, I’m unwilling to say it means X or Y. It may not mean that every non-citizen who has a child here in all circumstances, who isn’t lawfully present, that child is not a citizen.

But it also may not mean also the extreme version of the opposite side that say, you just come in here for a minute and a half, you have the baby, the baby’s a citizen, you go on to your next stop. Go right straight back to China. So it’s going to be interesting to see, and I’m hopeful that the Supreme Court comes down with a compromise position that protects our sovereignty and our citizenship from being further decimated because it already has been by the left. Because in the end, remember what the left wants, and this is kind of what this fight, in my view, is about from the left’s perspective.

They want to eliminate the distinctions between citizens and non-citizens. They hate the United States. They hate the idea of nation states. They want one world government, the equivalent thereof. Let’s be blunt. They don’t like the idea of citizenship and special rights attending to someone because they’re a citizen of a nation. Now, they sometimes may say that, but they don’t believe it. They only say it for convenience purposes when it’s convenient to them. So they want to end citizenship as we know it. So in many ways, the Supreme Court argument here, and I’m saying the justices are thinking this way, even those who disagree with me, it’s what it’s about.

What does citizenship mean? Do we have citizens of the United States that have a meaningfully distinct legal status here in the United States? The left is opposed to that. They want them to vote. They want them to get your money. They want to protect them from deportation, no matter what they do. How else can you conclude that they believe in citizenship? They don’t. They don’t. So this is a bigger story than just one Supreme Court decision. This is about whether we’re going to have a country or not, because if you don’t have citizens or the idea of citizenship, you don’t have a country.

So, dear citizen, we’ll find out in a few months what the Supreme Court thinks on this, but in the meantime, you can be sure that Judicial Watch will continue to participate in this debate and also seek the enforcement of the immigration laws as they were written to protect us from those politicians and bureaucrats, et cetera, who want to allow the law to be broken to destroy the Republic. Thanks for watching. Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button and like our video down below. Thank you. [tr:trw].

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