U.S. Sen. Tim Sheehy, the Treasure State\u2019s junior senator, has signed onto a friend-of-the-court brief filed at the United States Supreme Court that argues against the common understanding of birthright citizenship, and leans heavily on case that was originally used to deny Native Americans citizenship in the nineteenth century.<\/p>\n
Sheehy, a Republican, joined other members of Congress, including fellow U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio,\u00a0in the court filing that says citizenship should be based on the person or parents\u2019 allegiance rather than where a person is born.<\/p>\n
The case is one of the most-watched legal issues before the Supreme Court as it decides whether the commonly understood practice of birthright citizenship \u2014 that is, granting citizenship to those born on United States soil regardless of the parents\u2019 nationality \u2014 is still in line with the U.S. Constitution\u2019s 14th amendment, which was passed in 1866 and established former slaves who were born as chattel in the South were fully citizens.<\/p>\n
The brief filed at the Supreme Court level by the America First Legal Foundation argues that birthright citizenship has been misconstrued for years, and Congress meant to exclude some people who were born on U.S. soil.<\/p>\n
The meaning behind birthright citizenship <\/p>\n
The legal argument about birthright citizenship stems from the 14th Amendment, Section 1, which reads:<\/p>\n
\n \u201cAll 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.\u201d <\/p>\n
The lawsuit focuses on the clause \u201csubject to the jurisdiction thereof.\u201d Attorneys for the Congress members say that children who are born in America by parents not here through the normal naturalization process are not under the \u201cjurisdiction\u201d of America because they have come here without permission. As an example, the lawsuit points to children born to ambassadors in America are not citizens, nor would \u201cinvading soldiers\u201d or their children be considered citizens.<\/p>\n
\u201cIllegal aliens and their children are present in the United States without consent, i.e., only by defying its laws,\u201d the lawsuit argues.<\/p>\n
To help justify their argument, attorneys for the Congressional representatives trace their position to English case law that extends back to before the Pilgrims and the Mayflower. Using \u201cCalvin\u2019s Case\u201d from 1608, attorneys argue American law and citizenship depends not upon where a person is born, but rather who a person owed an allegiance to.<\/p>\n
The attorneys also claim that former U.S. Rep. John Bingham, a Republican from Ohio who helped write the 14th Amendment, argued in Congress that citizenship belonged to \u201cevery human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty.\u201d<\/p>\n
Native American cases <\/p>\n
The lawsuit also leans into a dark period in America\u2019s history in which federal law discounted or disqualified Native Americans as citizens of the United States for allegedly having loyalty to a tribe \u2014 something that wasn\u2019t corrected until 1924 when the Indian Citizenship Act was signed into law by President Calvin Coolidge.<\/p>\n
Attorneys for the Congressional representatives said that even as far back as 1790 the United States refused to recognize children of tribal nations as citizens because they \u201cowed partial loyalty to their tribes.\u201d They claim that this proves that the framers and even the country itself understood citizenship as something more complex and nuanced than the location of birth. The amicus brief argues that because Native Americans were stopped from being classified as citizens the 14th Amendment those who wrote it meant that there were people who were born on U.S. soil but were not citizens, rather they were \u201caliens.\u201d<\/p>\n
Citing a Supreme Court from 1884, attorneys for the group of Congress members pointed out the nation\u2019s highest court had failed to recognize birthright citizenship of Natives specifically because the justices believed \u201cthey owed allegiance to their tribes.\u201d<\/p>\n
No permission, no citizenship <\/p>\n
The latter part of the amicus brief said that because many of the undocumented aliens currently in the United States do not have permission to be in the United States, that they are not \u201cpermitted\u201d to \u201creside here\u201d and so the 14th Amendment should not apply to them.<\/p>\n
Relying on the case United States vs. Wong Kim Ark from 1898, attorneys point out in their friend-of-the-court brief, \u201cWong by its facts (and some of its language) is limited to children born of parents who at the time of birth were in the United States lawfully and indeed were permanent residents.\u201d<\/p>\n
The court documents also provide references to news stories that claim as many as 100,000 women travel to America annually to have children to become citizens, creating a sort of birth tourism, although both citations are at least seven years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe national security implications of misconstruing the citizenship clause are thus real, immediate and severe,\u201d the brief warns the court. \u201cIf the court adopts plaintiff\u2019s reasoning, then it will strip from Congress much of its power to prevent hostile nations from manufacturing nominal citizens \u2014 persons who bear no allegiance to this country and who may even seek to subvert her interests.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026The touchstone for birthright citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment is total allegiance to the United States, rather than merely being subject to its laws or some subset thereof.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U.S. Sen. Tim Sheehy, the Treasure State\u2019s junior senator, has signed onto a friend-of-the-court brief filed at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":445680,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[181583,23,93032,209557,76530,1340,123429,3,209558,9669,121589,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-445679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-14th-amendment","tag-america","tag-america-first","tag-birthright-citizenship","tag-citizens","tag-congress","tag-loyalty","tag-news","tag-place-of-birth","tag-ted-cruz","tag-tim-sheehy","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}