Immigration Politics: States plan crackdown on immigration but risk Latino ire

The crackdown insanity is a comin.'   

States plan crackdown on immigration but risk Latino ire | Reuters: "Republican state legislatures are ramping up a crackdown on illegal immigrants this year, in a concerted drive that risks alienating potential business allies and Latino voters.

At least seven states are tipped to follow Arizona's controversial push last year to curb illegal immigration, and more than a dozen are harmonizing efforts to cancel birthright citizenship for the U.S. born children of illegal immigrants." Jan. 4, 2011

Immigration Politics: Birthright Citizenship Looms as Next Immigration Battle

Birthright Citizenship Looms as Next Immigration Battle - NYTimes.com: "The next big immigration battle looming on the horizon centers on illegal immigrants’ offspring, who are granted automatic citizenship if born on American soil. Arguing for an end to the policy, long rooted in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, immigration hard-liners describe a wave of migrants like Ms. Vasquez stepping across the border in the advanced stages of pregnancy to drop what are dismissively called “anchor babies. ...

Arizona lawmakers intend to join with legislators from several other states to force the issue before the Supreme Court. This coalition of lawmakers will unveil its exact plans on Wednesday in Washington, but people involved in drafting the legislation say they have decided against the painstaking process of amending the Constitution and may instead unilaterally restrict the issuing of birth certificates to illegal immigrants’ children in their states. They know a flurry of lawsuits will follow and hope that the resulting legal conflict will be resolved in their favor. ...

Most Constitutional scholars consider the states’ effort to restrict birth certificates patently unconstitutional. “This is political theater, not a serious effort to create a legal test,” said Gabriel J. Chin, a law professor at the University of Arizona whose grandfather immigrated to the United States from China at a time when ethnic Chinese were excluded from the country. “It strikes me as unwise, un-American and unconstitutional.”" Jan. 4, 2011

Immigration Crackdown: Public evenly split on changing 14th amendment and the Case for Birthright Citizenship

Public evenly split on changing 14th amendment? just in from CNN:

As you may know, the Constitution says that all children born in the United States are automatically U.S. citizens regardless of their parents' status. Would you favor or oppose a Constitutional amendment to prevent children born here from becoming U.S. citizens unless their parents are also U.S. citizens?

Favor 49%

Oppose 51%

No opinion 1%

The public is just about evenly split on whether to repeal birthright citizenship. Hey, what's another Constitutional amendment between friends, anyway?

August 11, Washington Post, Opinion "The Plum Line"

The following OpEd article is an excellent review of the the Fourteenth Amendment and its interpretation by the Supreme Court.

The Case For Birthright Citizenship: Proponents of repeal (of the 14th Amendment) argue that the 14th Amendment was passed after the Civil War to guarantee citizenship to freed slaves, and that it was never intended to grant rights to the offspring of illegal aliens. But this argument is a non sequitur. At the time of the adoption of the amendment, there was no category of "illegal alien" because immigration was unrestricted and unregulated. If you secured passage to the United States, or simply walked across the open border with Mexico or Canada, you could stay permanently as a resident alien or apply to be naturalized after a certain number of years. And if you happened to give birth while still an alien, your child was automatically a citizen—a right dating back to English common law.

... In the case of U.S. v Wong, in 1898, regarding the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1892, the Supreme Court ruled, 7 to 2, "The amendment, in clear words and in manifest intent, includes the children born within the territory of the United States of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States." To hold otherwise, wrote Justice Horace Gray for the majority, would be to deny citizenship to the descendants of English, Irish, Germans and other aliens who had always been considered citizens even if their parents were citizens of other countries. For more than a 100 years, the court has consistently upheld this analysis. August 11, Wall Street Journal OpEd by Linda Chavez, chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity in Falls Church, Va. and director of public liaison in the Reagan White House.