Time for a Citizenship Amendment

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Apr 24, 2024 — On why our state’s constitution needs to be amended in order to prevent the children of illegal immigrants from using the ballot box to erase our nation’s First Amendment freedoms or implement foreign concepts like legalized slavery and Sharia Law.

Photo courtesy of WGBH/AP

Birthright Citizenship Distortions

  • Bottom Line Up-Front: Currently the NC Constitution requires either US birth or US naturalization but does not explicitly require voters to be US citizens. Unless we amend our constutition, this loophole will be exploited after Congress overturns “birthright citizenship” and SCOTUS upholds the change. In short, North Carolina’s Constitution (as written) will be used to allow children of illegal immigrants to vote in NC elections.
  • The NY Times defines “birthright citizenship” as a policy whereby “automatic American citizenship [is granted] for anyone born in the United States.”
  • Media disinformation declares, birthright citizenship “a 150-year-old law established in the Constitution that grants U.S. citizenship to anybody born on U.S. soil” (USA Today) and falsely claims it is “enshrined in the Constitution” (NY Times).
  • USA Today and The New York Times is lying again.

Original Intent

  • A Heritage Foundation study notes, the 14th Amendment clause, “U.S. citizenship is automatically granted to any person born within and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.”  in the drafting and adoption of the 14th Amendment, Senator Lyman Trumbull said “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States meant subject to its “complete” juris­diction, “[n]ot owing allegiance to anybody else.”
  • Thus, 14th Amendment’s enabling legislation 1866 Civil Rights Act, excluded American Indians because, though they were born on US territory, they were not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the US.
  • In addition to American Indians, SCOTUS case, “Slaughter-House Cases,” cited the 1866 Civil Rights Act to exclude from its operation “children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States,” and Elk v. Wilkins upheld denying US citizenship to an American Indian because the Indian plaintiff lacked “political jurisdiction.”
  • Birthright Citizenship was invented in an 1898 case, (US v. Wong) that reversed all precedence.
  • In 1994, the courts weakened Wong, (Rabang v. INS) ruling that persons born in the Philippines during the US’s military occupation in the territorial period were not “born … in the United States,” and were thus not entitled to citizenship by birth.
  • According to the Heritage Foundation, SCOTUS “has repeatedly acknowledged, Congress’s power over naturalization is “plenary,” while “judicial power over immigration and naturalization is extremely limited and concluded, Congress cannot “dip below the constitutional floor,” the Judiciary should avoid granting “broader… citizenship than is actually supported by the Constitution’s text.” (See citations below)

Bottom Line

  • Amending NC’s Constitution now, prior to such Congressional action, will protect our hard-earned freedoms.

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Citations

Miller v. Albright, 523 U.S. 420, 455 (1998);

Fiallo v. Bell, 430 U.S. 787, 792 (1977);

Kleindienst v. Mandel, 408 U.S. 753, 769-770 (1972);

Galvan v. Press, 347 U.S. 522, 531 (1954).