WASHINGTON -- Republican Sens. David Vitter (La.) and Rand Paul (Ky.) announced on Thursday their new push to deny birthright citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants via a congressional resolution, a legislative backdoor that they hope will prove easier than trying to amend the pertinent section of the U.S. Constitution.
The Supreme Court has consistently held that the Fourteenth Amendment grants automatic citizenship to those born on U.S. soil, but Vitter and Paul said Thursday that right should not extend to children of undocumented parents and that their resolution would close this "loophole." Passing an amendment to the Constitution is near-impossible, so the senators are instead introducing a "resolution that would amend the Constitution," according to a statement from the senators.
It's incorrect to assume "the 14th Amendment confers birthright citizenship to the children of illegal aliens, either by its language or intent," the statement said. "This resolution makes clear that under the 14th Amendment a person born in the United States to illegal aliens does not automatically gain citizenship."
This is the primary argument the two Republicans will have to stand on. They're walking a fine line between their broad ideology of strict adherence to the Constitution -- Paul in particular has been a darling of the Tea Party -- and their animus for undocumented immigration.
The debate over interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment hit a fever pitch in Congress last summer, when Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said undocumented immigrants come to the country to "drop and leave" their children and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said he feared "anchor babies" would be used by al Qaeda to raise radicals with American passports.
At the state level, legislation similar to the Vitter-Paul resolution is already underway. Arizona state Sen. Ron Gould (R) and state Rep. John Kavanagh (R) agreed to unveil bills jointly on Thursday that would limit citizenship to children with at least one parent who "has no allegiance to a foreign country." The bills have already garnered support from state Senate President Russell Pearce, the author of Arizona's controversial 2010 immigration law SB 1070. A number of other state lawmakers plan to introduce similar legislation.
Because states administer birth certificates, state legislators claim they have the right to change how citizenship is defined under the Fourteenth Amendment. This could, however, create a patchwork system of citizenship criteria.
Led by Pearce and Republican Pennsylvania state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, some state lawmakersformed the 14th Amendment Citizens Model Committee to draft such laws this past fall.
In some states, the goal is for the law to be challenged. Texas state Rep. Leo Berman (R) said in October he hoped his bill would lead to a Supreme Court case in which the court could reassess how birthright citizenship is defined.
But most legal scholars say the Court has already issued rulings on the amendment, which was adopted in 1868 to overturn the Dred Scott ruling and affirm citizenship for freed slaves and others of African descent. The Court ruled in 1898 that a child born in the United States to non-citizens was a citizen under the law.
If legislation to change the interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment survived a constitutional challenge, it could significantly increase the number of illegal immigrants, which currently stands at an estimated 11 million people. In 2008, about 340,000 babies, or 8 percent of the babies born in the United States that year, were born to illegal immigrants, according to a Pew Hispanic Center study released last year.
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