14th Amendment Repeal Push Is Un-American

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There are straw man (babies) and red herring ("they had babies. That's what humans do") fallacies abounding in Ms. Marshall's article. Furthermore, there's a difference between the 2nd or other original Amendments and the 14th; the founders established the original ones (and the States ratified them) through due process per the Constitution, while the 14th Amendment was passed only because the North won the war and forced it upon the other states (look it up). Ms. Marshall poses legitimately debated and adopted amendments with an illegally passed amendment that is only supported by an armed victory.

Federalists of GA 12:28PM May 23, 2012

penis

jake of CA 11:03AM April 30, 2012

right now it's the illegals and more so, the latino/hispanic community. who will be next? the african americans again or maybe the irish? talk about a never ending circle.....

dave of IL 5:09AM January 07, 2011

We can't do anything about the ones already here, but we can deter others. The author is so damn stupid. Of course people have babies, that's nature but it doesn't mean automatic citizenship for their rugrat(s). If we're talking about a modest revision, then we can at least say that one of the parents (also verified by DNA) must be a legal resident or citizen for their children to be granted citizenship. Testing can be passed onto the parents. If they want their child to have citizenship, they'll pay it. Now I don't think that is unreasonable and you liberals aren't going to provide a sensible response against other than your usually it's not fair crap.

A.J. Thibodeaux of TX 7:18PM December 31, 2010

The 14th Amendment does not need to be changed or repealed - Congress just needs to read it and enforce it.
These illegal childrend of illegal aliens are not subject to the United States - they are subject to the country their parents snuck in from - therefore they are not U.S. citizens.
Duh? Just read it.

Charles of TX 9:35PM October 19, 2010

"How is a person here illegally, subject to the US jurisdiction? The answer is, they are not..." Ok, so that means they can't be busted for violating any federal law that is not against their origin country's laws, I presume, and they'd only be able to be arrested for illegal crossing of the borders, if that. Whoopie! Illegal immigrant crime spree!
More to the point, if we go revoking the citizenship of children of noncitizens and illegal immigrants, we'd be stripping a large portion of America's population of citizenship, perhaps (at its most absurd) handing citizenship back exclusively to Native Americans and descendants of colonists. That would entail a defrocking of most of America's population. Do we really want that?
Furthermore, 14th amendment partial repeal would create a permanent underclass. It'd create a caste system of legals and illegals, in which illegals and their children settle and have few or no rights, and have little money, and live in slums, and commit crimes and revolt and require much security and waste of taxes to handle, and so on and so forth. In the long run a repeal might even lead to a return of slavery. Do we really want that?

Richard Rabinowitz of NJ 12:53PM September 11, 2010

Leslie, just reread section 1 of the 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.
2 criteria must be met, first the person must be born or naturalized in the USA. But note the second criteria, "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof". How is a person here illegally, subject to the US jurisdiction? The answer is, they are not, so while the first criteria is met, the second would not and the newborn, while born on US soil would still be subject to the jurisdiction of it's parents homeland. In order to be under the jurisdiction of the US, the US would have had to grant your permission to be here. Green card holders would count, so would someone visiting under a valid and current tourist visa.
All that is needed, is to enforce the current amendment as it's written.

Dante of CA 5:23PM September 08, 2010

A nurse complains that 99% of the babies her staff delivers are to illegal moms.
That's in the town I grew up in, not a border town.
Who ever grants these babies US citizenship and all the benefits including free hospital service should be punished for violating the 14th Amendment as it reads in full. But NOooo!
The 14th is used to hide behind. The requirements the framers included have been long since castrated rendering it an automatic birthright instead of conditional like it is in the Constitution.
In the constitution the parents are black citizens, thus their baby is too. They were slaves but now they are immancipated. Read the context.
The Constitution is being violated by foreign nationals, legal and illegal alike.
It's the interpretation by those with an agenda that is at fault.
If the mom is a legal Russian tourist staying just long enough to get the birthright for her baby, or a Latina that avoids the immigration law and jurisdiction of the USA to circumvent the visa process, They are fraudulently cashing in on the US taxpayer compliments of the Supreme Court and the Congress. All sides agree it is unsustainable and the fault of D.C.
Justice Brennan's footnote in 1982 said illegals should not be distinguished from legal moms. The flood of anchor babies followed for 2 generations. 5 to 6,000,000 school age recently. I say he's right but both moms should be disqualified! Not accepted. They are both under the jurisdiction of foreign governments with their own tax payers. US tax payers are getting stiffed left and right. Read the Constitution! Washington needs the change.

Ron of CA 5:54PM September 06, 2010

Let's not stop at repealing the 14th Amendment. Let's also repeal the 13th,
15th, and 19th Amendments. Re-legalize slavery and restrict the right to
vote to white males. This is the real "conservative" (read: reactionary) agenda.

Daniel Rosenthal of CA 9:14AM August 28, 2010

Part-Fourth followed from Four-Parts
In reference to Abuse as a Disease, Not a Crime By Thomas K. Grose Posted 3/18/07 Thirty years ago, there were an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 heroin addicts in the Netherlands. Since then, the country's total population has grown by 6 percent. But the number of junkies has remained the same. Few new users have joined their ranks, and theirs is an aging cohort. There's a popular misconception in the United States that Holland has a permissive attitude toward drugs. It doesn't. Instead, the country has adopted a more pragmatic approach to drug abuse. It still vigorously prosecutes large-scale drug trafficking. But it considers drug users a public-health problem, not a criminal one. Addicts caught stealing or breaking other laws are prosecuted, but they aren't arrested for possession. "The view is that addiction is a brain disease, and it requires treatment, not incarceration," says Wim van den Brink, a psychiatrist at the Academic Medical Center of the University of Amsterdam. That policy makes for a remarkable statistic: About 70 percent of Holland's drug addicts are in treatment programs; only 10 to 15 percent of America's are. Savings. Does Holland's pragmatism explain why the country's heroin problem has stabilized? Van den Brink admits there's no empirical evidence to back up that conclusion. Yet numerous studies show it's much less expensive to treat abusers than to toss them into prison. A 1994 Rand analysis concluded that for every extra dollar spent on addiction treatment, taxpayers save $7.46 in societal expenses, including the cost of incarceration. Holland's decriminalization policy also extends to marijuana; Amsterdam's pot-selling coffee shops are infamous. But the logic behind allowing the sale of small amounts of cannabis is to separate the markets for soft and hard drugs, making it less likely that pot smokers will try something worse. Among teens ages 12 through 18, the number of cannabis users in Holland dropped from 11 to 9 percent between 1996 and 2003. The Netherlands has also tried treating junkies with prescription heroin. A 2005 study found this too saved money because participants stopped committing crimes to support their habits. The United Kingdom routinely prescribed heroin to addicts from the 1920s to the '60s, and its addict population remained stable at fewer than 2,000. When laws changed in 1971, the legal market gave way to an illegal one, and the addict population has grown to 300,000. There are also antidrug campaigns in Holland's schools. Harald Wychgel, spokesman for a drug research center, says the messages encourage people to "make fact-based decisions ... though some facts are scary."
http://politics.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/leslie-marshall/2010/8/25/14th-Amendment-Repeal-Push-Is-Un-American.html

Mr.F.Koch of DC 7:04AM August 26, 2010