Who is a U.S. citizen, and under what circumstances should citizenship be taken away? With the ongoing controversy over illegal immigration and last week’s unsuccessful car bombing by a Pakistani-born U.S. citizen, debate over these questions has heated up.
Many conservatives have argued that the children of illegal immigrants born in the U.S. should not be considered natural born citizens. This arguement was most recently made by California U.S. Representative Duncan P. Hunter. I know, you saying “didn’t that wingnut retire?” Yes, old Duncan — who was the only Congressman to endorse the 1996 presidential candidacy of insane Congressman “B-1 Bob” Dornan, who excused U.S. violations of the Geneva Conventions at Guantanamo Bay because the prisoners were being treated to meals featuring lemon chicken, and who launched his own embarrassing candidacy for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination — did retire from the Congress. Unfortunately, his dimwitted, jarhead son of the same name was elected to fill his seat in 2008. Young Duncan has proven once again that the (wing)nut doesn’t fall from the tree.
Duncan Hunter Jr. - A new dim-bulb in wingnuttia's not-so-bright universe
In response to a question at a teabagger rally in Ramona, California about the children of illegal immigrants, Wingnut Jr. agreed that he would favor stripping the citizenship of those U.S. born children, mumbling something about how walking across a border doesn’t make one a citizen, that it was “something in our souls.” Where do we start with this moron? First of all, the underlying racism of that comment is appalling. The history of the United States is a history of immigration, and also sadly a history of discrimination against these immigrants. Whether it was the Irish, Chinese, Italians, etc., these groups were not shown the welcome mat by large percentages of the population because they were “different.” Are we really to be shocked to find the teabaggers, the modern-day Know Nothings, to demonstrate the same hostility?
Bad news for Wingnut Jr. and the teabaggers. Their idea about stripping the citizenship of these U.S. born children is unconstitutional. For a group that shouts all the time about things being unconstitutional, it’s apparent that not many of these nimrods have ever read the document. Let’s take a little look at something called the Fourteenth Amendment, Section One:
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. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
The question as to whether this applied to the U.S. born children of non-citizens was addressed in the Supreme Court case of the United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), which found that the American-born children of non-citizen Chinese immigrants WERE entitled to U.S. citizenship. More recent Supreme Court decisions, such as Plyer v. Doe (1982) and INS v. Rios-Pineda (1985) have upheld this view of the Fourteenth Amendment. Any law passed by Congress to strip these children of their citizenship rights is likely to be held unconstitutional. Of course, most conservative leaders with access to a copy of the constitution or the U.S. Code already know this, but they’ll continue to whip up the anger and fears of their ignorant, sheep-like followers regardless of the facts.
Speaking about whipping up fear, Joe Lieberman couldn’t help but open his mouth on the arrest of Pakistani-born Faisel Shahzad. Shahzad, who thankfully turned out to be incredibly incompetent in his attempt to car-bomb New York’s Times Square. is a naturalized U.S. citizen. Now Lieberman (along with GOP spokesmodel Scott Brown) wants to introduce legislation expanding the ability of the U.S. government to repeal a person’s citizenship beyond traditional violations like acts of treason against the United States.
On the surface, the proposal might sound quite reasonable. That said, there are legitimate concerns that the language of the legislation might be too broad. For instance, Lieberman argues that anyone accused of giving aid or support to the enemies of the United States or one of our allies should be stripped of their citizenship. Hopefully the senator meant convicted and not just accused(after all, we do treasure due process here in the U.S. — or at least we used to). Also, I’m concerned about the language concerning our allies. For instance, if a person were sending money to support a resistance movement against an human-rights abusing authoritarian regime who happened to be allied with the U.S., would that person be eligible to be stripped of their citizenship? Would a person like myself, who vigorously opposes the continued British occupation of the six counties of Northern Ireland, be a possible target? If I give money to a group like Sinn Fein (the political arm of the now largely defunct Irish Republican Army), would I conceivably be threatened with the loss of my citizenship if that group suddenly makes its way — through right-wing, British unionist political pressure — to some State Department terrorism list?
Hopefully cooler heads will prevail before we start tinkering around with our civil liberties again. The Bush-Cheney years were an era of a brutal trashing of our Constitution. Let’s not continue to further the damage under Obama.