The New Republic

This Democrat hopes the Republicans ignore Dionne's attempted guilt trip. The Fourteenth Amendment was about emancipation and ensuring that they were unquestionably U.S. citizens. Does Dionne seriously think that had the Republicans explicitly qualified the amendment to address the situation of illegal immigrants not here under some color of law that ANYONE would have bat an eyelash, even Carl Schurz or the Radical Republicans of the era? Like Dionne notes, back then we hardly had any restrictions on immigration -- it didn't even occur to them there might be a day where the U.S. would lose control of its borders and their citizenship rule would lead to the situation of today, or if they did they might have thought "legality" of presence was implied. Then Dionne raises the tired "racists were against immigration in the 19th and early 20th century, so it's racist to be against it now." Tell that to Nick Kristof and Paul Krugman, who both came out against "comprehensive reform" when McCain and Kennedy were pushing it during Bush's administration. Yeah, a couple of real Klansmen those two. I truly dislike having to write this: when it comes to immigration, the writers on TNR go into a bizzaro world where you can't talk facts, compare studies, make reasoned arguments, etc. - you can only talk about feelings and wishes. Of course the irony here is that illegal immigration's biggest victims are African-Americans, and not just economically (though check out what Professor George Rojas says has been the effect on the African-American unemployment rate). The very citizenship rules Dionne champions are diluting African-American political power as well as taxing vital resources like education. Revisiting the 14th Amendment may not be the best way to revisit this problem, and it may be a political stunt, but it's time for progressive pundits to get a clue that this battle is not the simplistic "return to the civil rights/anti-European/Asian immigration battles of the past" that they see it as.

- Lymon1

August 5, 2010 at 7:13am

About some things it’s possible to be polite, about others you have to get down and dirty and tell the truth. Let’s examine what Mr. Dionne says about Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina: “…Particularly depressing is the fact that the idea of repealing the 14th Amendment's guarantee of citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States was given momentum by one of the nation's most reasonable conservatives...” Mr. Dionne wrote this because Senator Graham has said: “…People come here to have babies; they come here to drop a child. It's called, 'drop and leave.' To have a child in America, they cross the border, they go to the emergency room, have a child, and that child's automatically an American citizen. That shouldn't be the case. That attracts people here for all the wrong reasons…” The E.J. Dionne Jr. writes: “…Drop a child? How can a strong believer in the right to life use such a phrase?...” He goes on further to quote the Cleveland Plain Dealer's columnist Connie Schultz: "…I have lived for more than half a century, and I have yet to meet a mother anywhere in the world who would describe the excruciating miracle of birth as 'dropping' a baby..." I think by strong believer in right-to-life Mr. Dionne means anti-abortion. I also think that Ms. Schultz has never had a real conversation with a white American southerner. It’s very easy for a “strong believer in right-to-life” to use such a phrase, because to him and his fellow white Americans children are white and “right-to-life” is referring to white’s only. America in the post WWII period had few more ardent champions of “right-to-life” or the anti-abortion stance than the late Reverend Jerry Falwell of Lynchburg, VA. Yet the main stream media largely overlooked a key caveat to his unwavering opposition to abortion of any kind, that of a white woman “raped” by a Black man. Rev. Falwell never could bring himself to oppose abortion in the case of a white woman who found herself pregnant by a black man. As for Ms. Schultz, she must never have heard that the white southerner typically refers to the bearing of a child by a Black woman as “dropping a pickaninny”. And this speaks to the heart of the debate about the white south’s (and those white “fellow-traveling” non southerners who think the same way) opposition then and today to the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. The white opposition is two-fold first, the 14th Amendment makes US citizenship a birthright, as opposed to the white south’s desire for a proper racial distinction; and second, in a bedrock decision of the US Supreme Court (almost as important as Maubury v. Madison), the Court by and through the 14th Amendment made the US Constitution (specifically the “Bill of Rights”) applicable to the States’ their Governments’, their institutions and their peoples. Before the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution the only thing that the US Constitution guaranteed a citizen of a state of the union was the sanctity of contracts, the immunity from taking of private property without just compensation, and a republican form of state government. None of the personal freedoms in the Bill of Rights was deemed applicable to the states of the union or the state legislatures, until the 14th Amendment. Before the 14th Amendment states could restrict freedom of the press, assembly, speech, trials by juries of one’s peers, all of the rights that, reading the constitution one might foolishly think that by living in say, South Carolina or Georgia that one had. Well, before the 14th Amendment nothing could have been further from the truth. Before the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution states could order the eviction from their territory un-enslaved Blacks, or emancipated Blacks or they could make it illegal for a white slave holder to manumit his own slaves. Without the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution there would be no environmental regulation in states like Georgia or Alabama that so enjoy allowing businesses to poison their workers. There would be no right to meet seek to form trade unions or to meet and talk with “outside agitators” who could be banned from the state. This is the world that they want to recreate. They see the handwriting upon the demographic wall. A United States with a 40% non-white population is a US that must not have a 14th Amendment. It won’t be repealed today, but I predict that by the fourth census of this century it will be a central issue of political debate in this country. A country with a 40% non-white population must have formal racial restrictions upon the non-whites. Otherwise the whites will start firing upon Fort Sumter again.

- 12alainu

August 5, 2010 at 9:12am

Its funny that Democrats never have a problem with judges using the extra-constitutional method of judicial interpretation and annulment to change the meaning of the Constitution, but they nearly always have a problem with using the method specified in the document itself--amendment through the amendment process. Where's all the talk of the Living Constitution in Dionne's essay? Lindsay is right, in cultures in which the children eventually take care of the parents in old age, having a baby in the United States is the easiest way for a poor foreigner to ensure her future. A continual influx of poor Latin immigrants prevents the assimilation of those who are already here and especially harms those who came here legally. It also hurts other minority poor by taking away jobs and keeping companies from raising their salaries for menial jobs. It would be very easy to amend the 14th amendment textually so that the meaning intended is preserved--that only the children of citizens and those with green cards attain citizenship by birth.

- tmitch57

August 5, 2010 at 12:19pm

First, to Lymon1 and tmitch57: Lymon: Krugman was not exactly opposed to comprehensive immigration reform -- he was opposed to the specific way it was being done: http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/25/opinion/25krugman.html?_r=1 To both: As Dionne points out, the 14th amendment very specifically included the children of immigrants (of note for tmitch: virtually all of those immigrants would have been from cultures where children take care of their parents -- exactly the same culture the US had at the time). There wasn't a lot of worry about border security -- because no one worried much about where the borders really were. And workers from Mexico and Canada freely flowed across the borders; in fact, one reason we have as many illegal immigrants as we do is that the laws, as written, shut down the avenues for the previous, perfectly legal transient workers. Further, unless we do go down the Constitutional amendment path (which, btw, mitch, would be an amendment to the Constitution, not to the 14th amendment), then, if we agreed with NumbersUSA and others that, somehow, the 14th amendment doesn't cover all children born within the US (with the exception of the diplomats), then we would further have to accept that undocumented immigrants are somehow not subject to the jurisdiction of our laws. Hey presto - you've opened a wonderful avenue to, for example, not allowing the police to lock up anyone the drug cartels can recruit as a mule if that person comes from the barrios and is born to non-citizens (at the time of that person's birth). Way to go on that one. As to 12alainu: To quote: "As for Ms. Schultz, she must never have heard that the white southerner typically refers to the bearing of a child by a Black woman as “dropping a pickaninny”." I'm sorry -- but what?!?!?!? Exactly which "white southerner" are you referring to???? I'm white, and I've lived in the South (NC, GA, and LA) all my life (that'd be 41 years), and am the grandson of a sharecropper -- and I have never, in my entire life, heard anyone refer to "the bearing of a child by a Black woman" as "dropping a pickaninny." In fact, you're the first person I've ever heard or seen use that expression; were it not for you and your extreme anti-Southerner viewpoint, I'd have no idea what that meant. Not sure which "white southerners" you think are "typical," but I don't know them.

- twicker

August 5, 2010 at 4:05pm

I doubt that children of illegal immigrants were considered when the 14th was debated. The welfare state didn't exist, so the cost to others of another child citizen was minimal. It's best to read the Constitution literally, so either amend it to deny citizenship to illegals, or get rid of the welfare state that makes it beneficial for your child to be born here. I do think something needs to be done. The Census Bureau projects upwards of a billion people in the US yet this century--disgusting. Making illegal immigration a capital offense would do the trick.

- karlwk

August 5, 2010 at 6:41pm

Twicker: To a point, but that's like saying Mickey Kaus isn't against comprehensive immigration reform either -- heck, Kaus has hinted that if a plan truly secured the border and had reliable status-checking for employers, he'd endorse "one last amnesty" but doesn't everyone count the "borders first" crowd in the "against reform" column? Krugman, I think, is reflecting the typical progressive case against illegal immigration: no outrage at the understandable actions of the immigrants themselves for "breaking the law" or nativist complaints, but a recognition that there are serious economic concerns when you give "green card amnesty" to millions of low skilled workers, especially when history teaches that their ranks will eventually be replaced by a new group of illegal immigrants. Regardless, that's the kind of debate I'd like to see in TNR, not accusations that anyone who wants to read-in a qualifier to the 14th Amendment of "...but you got to be here legally" is in league with the Confederacy.

- Lymon1

August 5, 2010 at 9:12pm

I would be interested to hear from Dionne about who is paying the medical bills. Having spent so much time and effort researching the 19th century, he might turn his attention to the 21st. Enough with the demagoguery from all sides.

- lsernoff

August 5, 2010 at 10:40pm