[Vision2020] Sali Seeks to Delay Mexican Consulate

[Andreas Schou]

> Native Americans were not considered US citizens until after the 1920s.
> African Americans were not considered citizens until after 1865. So, it has
> not always been so that just because someone is born in the United States
> they are automatically entitled to be a US Citizen.

The 14th Amendment wasn't ratified until 1868, and Native Americans
were only given US citizenship (in a bill stripping tribal
sovreignity) in 1924. The fact that reservation lands are not "under
the jurisdiction" of the United States is the reason that they did not
have citizenship -- though even under that decision, Native Americans
born inside US territory did have citizenship.

> If someone born here is born here in the commission of a crime against the
> country, I don't think you can argue that always necessarily entitles
> automatic citizenship.

Illegal immigration is not a crime. If it were, the government would
have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the individual was not a
citizen of the US -- an impossible burden, in most cases. The vast
majority of immigration cases are handled administratively, in courts
that do not (and cannot) handle criminal cases.

> If you argue, as you have, that someone who has lived in the United States
> since they were 2 years old, and now at the age of 32, should not be sent
> back to Mexico because they have not managed to get their papers in order;
> then it should also follow that just because someone was born in the United
> States they are always entitled to live here.

"Should" and "is" are different things. It *is* the case that children
of illegal immigrants born in the United States are US citizens.

> It makes more since to me to be a citizen of a country of your parents then
> the one you happen to be in when you are born. It is also much easier to
> establish blood relationship then where you were born. A DNA test can
> establish disputed parents, what test can you do to establish where you were
> born?

"What makes sense to Donovan" is, thank God, not the same thing as
"the Constitution of the United States."

-- ACS