To most Americans, our constitution is a sacred document to be revered and followed. Sadly, this president isn’t like most Americans.
In an interview released today, the president expressed his intent to essentially abrogate the 14th Amendment through an executive order. Specifically, he wants to redefine who qualifies as an American citizen by eliminating the citizenship rights of those who were born in America if their parents entered illegally.
To put this bluntly, the president wishes to do away with 150 years of American jurisprudence in order to undermine, if not outright eliminate the citizenship status of our Brown brothers and sisters. Let’s be clear, even though it could impact any immigrant group, in practice, it will likely target Hispanics and those from countries with large Muslim populations. This executive order will not be used to send citizens back to Russia, Ukraine or whatever country his wife is from.
In order to understand the gravity of the president’s intent, it is first important to realize the significance and purpose of the 14th Amendment. As I’ve written in previous posts, the 14th Amendment is one of the most important Amendments for minorities, particularly African Americans. Written after the Civil War during a period known as Reconstruction, it was an outright rebuke of the Dred Scott case.
That case, if you will recall, declared that the black man had no rights which the white man was bound to respect. It also held that slaves and their descendants were not American citizens; they were chattel. Essentially, a slave was as much an American citizen as a cow or a chair according to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dred Scott.
The 14th Amendment rejected this and made it clear that persons like Dred Scott, were in fact, American citizens. It gave citizenship to former slaves and their descendants, as well as anyone born in America. It reads, in pertinent part, “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.” (emphasis added).
Supreme court precedent is clear that the 14th Amendment ensures American citizenship to those born in America. This was first held in 1898 in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, and further clarified to include children whose parents entered the country illegally in the 1982 decision Plyler v. Doe.
Therefore, this president’s erroneous belief that he can determine citizenship by an Executive Order is not only poor immigration policy but an attack on one of the most important civil rights laws in our country’s history. To allow him to weaken such a critical law would only have rippling effects to all black and brown citizens.
I’m not sure what this president will ultimately do (I don’t even think he knows). I hope he will avoid what will likely spark a constitutional crisis.
But more than anything, I hope people will no longer allow him to continue these flagrant assaults on people, on the media, and on the law.
–Until Next Time–
Palooke
