Kamala Harris: Was she “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.”

 Why not simply answer the question rather than deny the merits of the question?

Were Harris’ parents lawful permanent residents at the time of her birth? If so, then under the actual holding of [the 1898 Supreme Court case] Wong Kim Ark, she should be deemed a citizen at birth — that is, a natural-born citizen — and hence eligible. Or were they instead, as seems to be the case, merely temporary visitors, perhaps on student visas issued pursuant to Section 101(15)(F) of Title I of the 1952 Immigration Act? If the latter were indeed the case, then derivatively from her parents, Harris was not subject to the complete jurisdiction of the United States at birth, but instead owed her allegiance to a foreign power or powers — Jamaica, in the case of her father, and India, in the case of her mother — and was therefore not entitled to birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment as originally understood.

Despite the Democrats’ “open border” agenda, which subordinates the law to their political objectives, the notion of “birthright citizenship” is erroneous. It is clear that the drafters and ratifiers of the 14th Amendment never intended it to confer citizenship on the children of illegal aliens. Leftmedia “fact-checkers” who dismiss Harris’s parents’ status as irrelevant completely ignore that aspect of the question. In fact, parental legal status is the entire premise of the “anchor baby” debate.

As noted by Eastman, the 14th Amendment states, “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.” The phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” is key, regardless of the media effort to ignore rather than address the real argument. Contrary to the constitutional mandate, the Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA) of 1952 establishes in U.S. Code what “jurisdiction” means, and, according to the State Department, that includes children born to illegals.

Child Deaths In the U.S.

Child Deaths In the U.S.

Who Are the Perpetrators?

Parents—acting alone or with another parent or individual—were responsible for 78 percent of child abuse or neglect fatalities. More than one-quarter (27 percent) of fatalities were perpetrated by the mother acting alone, 16.8 percent were perpetrated by the father acting alone, and 20.1 percent were perpetrated by the mother and father acting together. Nonparents (including kin and child care providers, among others) were responsible for 16.7 percent of child fatalities, and child fatalities with unknown perpetrator relationship data accounted for 5.3 percent of the total.

How Bad Is It?

Fatal child abuse may involve repeated abuse over a period of time, or it may involve a single, impulsive incident (e.g., drowning, suffocating, shaking a baby). In cases of fatal neglect, the child’s death does not result from anything the caregiver does; rather, it results from a caregiver’s failure to act. The neglect may be chronic (e.g., extended malnourishment) or acute (e.g., an infant who drowns after being left unsupervised in the bathtub).

74.6 percent of children who died from child maltreatment suffered neglect either alone or in combination with another maltreatment type, and 44.2 percent of children who died suffered physical abuse either alone or in combination with other maltreatment. Medical neglect either alone or in combination with another maltreatment type was reported in 5.7 percent of fatalities.

Summary

While the exact number of children affected is uncertain (reporting is erratic), child fatalities due to abuse or neglect remain a serious problem in the United States. Fatalities due to child maltreatment disproportionately affect young children and most often are caused by one or both of the child’s parents.

Census-taking or Voter I.D? The Electoral College threat…..

Census-taking or Voter I.D? The Electoral College threat…..

By Walter E. Williams

Voter ID laws have been challenged because liberal Democrats deem them racist. I guess that’s because they see blacks as being incapable of acquiring some kind of government-issued identification. Interesting enough is the fact that I’ve never heard of a challenge to other ID requirements as racist, such as those: to board a plane, open a charge account, have lab work done or cash a welfare check. Since liberal Democrats only challenge legal procedures to promote ballot-box integrity, the conclusion one reaches is that they are for vote fraud prevalent in many Democrat-controlled cities.

There is another area where the attack on ballot-box integrity goes completely unappreciated. We can examine this attack by looking at the laws governing census taking. As required by law, the U.S. Census Bureau is supposed to count all persons in the U.S. Those to be counted include citizens, legal immigrants and non-citizen long-term visitors. The law also requires that illegal immigrants be a part of the decennial census. The estimated number of illegal immigrants ranges widely from 12 million to 30 million. Official estimates put the actual number closer to 12 million.

Both citizens and non-citizens are included in the census and thus affect apportionment counts. Counting illegals in the census undermines one of the fundamental principles of representative democracy – namely, that every citizen-voter has an equal voice. Through the decennial census based process of apportionment, states with large numbers of illegal immigrants, such as California and Texas, unconstitutionally gain additional members in the U.S. House of Representatives thereby robbing the citizen-voters in other states of their rightful representation.

Hans von Spakovsky, a Heritage Foundation scholar and former member of the Federal Election Commission, has written an article, “How Noncitizens Can Swing Elections: Without Even Voting Illegally.” He points to the fact that 12 million illegal aliens, plus other aliens who are here legally but are not citizens and have no right to vote, distort representation in the House. Spakovsky cites studies by Leonard Steinhorn of American University, scholars at Texas A&M University and the Center for Immigration Studies. Steinhorn’s study lists 10 states that are each short one congressional seat that they would have had if apportionment were based on U.S. citizen population: Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania.

On the other hand, states with large numbers of illegal aliens and other non-citizens have congressional seats they would not have had. They are: California (five seats), Florida (one seat), New York (one seat), Texas (two seats) and Washington state (one seat). Moreover, the inflated population count resulting from the inclusion of illegal immigrants and other non-citizens increases the number of votes some states get in the Electoral College system, affecting the actual process of electing the president of the United States.

There is a strong argument for counting non-citizens, whether they are here legally or illegally. An accurate population count is important for a number of public policy reasons as well as national security – we should know who is in our country. But as professor Mark Rozell, acting dean of the School of Policy, Government, and International Affairs at George Mason University, and Paul Goldman, a weekly columnist for the Washington Post, say in their Politico article, there is no “persuasive reason to allow the presence of illegal immigrants, unlawfully in the country, or noncitizens generally, to play such a crucial role in picking a president.”

Hans von Spakovsky concludes his article saying, “It is a felony under federal law for a noncitizen to vote in our elections because voting is a right given only to American citizens. It is a precious right that must be earned by becoming a citizen. Giving aliens (particularly those whose first act was to break our laws to illegally enter the country) political power in Congress and allowing them to help choose our president strike at the very heart of our republic and what it means to be an American.”

Does Birth by an illegal alien alone make one citizen?

Does Birth by an illegal alien alone make one citizen?

Reading a book on the Indian Wars and came across a reference to the Supreme Court decision in the case of Elk v. Wilkins from 1884

I pulled up the full text and found it interesting.

"The main object of the opening sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment was to settle the question, upon which there had been a difference of opinion throughout the country and in this Court, as to the citizenship of free negroes (Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393), and to put it beyond doubt that all persons, white or black, and whether formerly slaves or not, born or naturalized in the United States, and owing no allegiance to any alien power, should be citizens of the United States and of the state in which they reside. Slaughterhouse Cases, 16 Wall. 36, 83 U. S. 73; Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U. S. 303, 100 U. S. 306.

This section contemplates two sources of citizenship, and two sources only: birth and naturalization. The persons declared

Page 112 U. S. 102

to be citizens are "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof." The evident meaning of these last words is not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction and owing them direct and immediate allegiance. And the words relate to the time of birth in the one case, as they do to the time of naturalization in the other. Persons not thus subject to the jurisdiction of the United States at the time of birth cannot become so afterwards except by being naturalized, either individually, as by proceedings under the naturalization acts, or collectively, as by the force of a treaty by which foreign territory is acquired.

Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States, members of and owing immediate allegiance to one of the Indiana tribes (an alien though dependent power), although in a geographical sense born in the United States, are no more "born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof," within the meaning of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment, than the children of subjects of any foreign government born within the domain of that government, or the children born within the United States of ambassadors or other public ministers of foreign nations."