Any doubts you may have had about the absurdity and falseness of American electoral politics would have been removed if you had lived through the barrage of advertising that preceded our South Carolina presidential primary.  Every single one of the Republican candidates pretended to have become Horatio at the Bridge, single-handedly holding back the onslaught of illegal aliens.  Mr. Huckabee even claimed that he feels kin to us fellows driving pickup trucks with Confederate flags.  And despite the Eighth Commandment, the Rev. Mr. H. appropriated Dr. Paul’s issue of “birthright citizenship,” proposing a constitutional amendment against the fraud of new citizens being created by virtue of being relatives of innocent “anchor babies” born on our soil to illegal aliens.  Mr. Thompson—a layman, admittedly—then violated the Ninth Commandment by saying he would himself “reconsider” the issue, asking us to suspend our disbelief that he had ever considered it a first time.

An early U.S. Congress defined a citizen as a free white person born or naturalized in the United States.  That indicated who Americans thought they were and intended to remain, though it was mainly concerned with defining status as to protection in international matters.  Although the Constitution called for uniform rules of naturalization, citizenship long remained a matter determined by the states.  And in the states, it was determined less by legal technicalities than by society—immigrants who were adopted into American communities or who formed communities acceptable to their neighbors were treated as citizens.  At the time, citizenship did not confer a claim on government handouts and, in fact, involved obligations and duties of self-government to be exercised in regard to the jury box, the ballot box, and the cartridge box.

Then came that great rub of all rubs, the War Against Southern Independence.  It was necessary to clarify the status of some millions of black persons who heretofore in federal law and jurisprudence, and in the constitutions and laws of all but a few states, were not citizens, whether slave or free.  Thus, the Fourteenth Amendment: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States . . . ”

The amendment, fraudulently ratified and laden with infinite mischief, was intended to meet the particular problem of the freed people’s status.  Of course, its true intent was to allow Republicans to enlist the black vote in the South and thus permanently control the Union—and, as some historians have plausibly argued, to pave the way for corporations to have federal immunities from state interference as “persons.”

The bit about “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” was the troublesome part, since it might be construed to apply to persons who were neither born in nor naturalized in the United States.  It was not until 1898 that the Supreme Court gave “birthright citizenship” to all “legal residents.”  Even then, there was a question about the Indians who, it seems, were not intended to be covered by the Fourteenth Amendment.  (Those who did not confer citizenship on babies born to American Indians could hardly have intended conferring it on babies born here to Mexican Indians.)  It is complicated, but as far as I can tell, there has never been a definitive law or court decision that automatically makes children born to illegal immigrants citizens.  But that seems long to have been the accepted practice, which is not surprising, since 20th-century America was pretty well seduced by the charming fable of the Melting Pot—that Americans are a new international race of men without borders, united only by common benevolent emotions.

Mr. Huckabee says he would propose a constitutional amendment clarifying whether citizenship is a matter of parentage or place of birth.  This would doubtless be a good thing, if it could be accomplished.  However, we know that promoting a constitutional amendment that can never be ratified is a familiar trick Republican politicians use to dodge hard issues.  Not to mention that it is brought forward by an aspirant to high office who, only yesterday, wanted to make millions of illegals into instant citizens.  In this, as in many other cases, a constitutional amendment is not needed.  What is needed is for Americans to make up their minds who they are and what they want to continue to be.

 

[Image by Tony Webster (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons]