From: laura@catfish.ocpt.ccur.com (Laura Gillespie)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian,soc.culture.canada,soc.culture.usa
Subject: Re: Citizen babies (was Re: Ridiculous Health Insurance Policy)
Date: 23 Jul 92 14:45:17 GMT
Followup-To: soc.culture.usa
Organization: Concurrent Computer Corp. Oceanport NJ

In article <1992Jul22.181816.9302@cs.ucla.edu> wales@CS.UCLA.EDU (Rich Wales) writes:
>Pravin Devineni Ratnam wrote:
>
>	Also, I have heard of instances where people come on
>	tourist visas and have babies.  The U.S. should have
>	a law against granting citizenships to such babies.
>
>Such a law would probably have to take the form of a constitutional
>amendment.  The 14th Amendment says that anyone born (or naturalized) in
>the US is a US citizen.  The only recognized exception is for children
>of high-level diplomats who are not subject to US jurisdiction because
>of diplomatic immunity.

This looks like a time to bring up the little fact of history that the
14th Amendment was, and is, still in dispute as to the legality of its
passage.  Now, please don't paint me as a white supremacist for
bringing up the point -- I am far from that, and have no qualms about
its acknowledging the rights of all the people of the U.S.  My quibble
is purely over the fact that the established process for passage was
illegally circumvented in this case, and that therefore there was not
the true consensus usually required for Amendments.  I happen to think
that had the process been allowed to proceed with no skullduggery
on the part of the "Radical Republicans" (as this subgroup of the
Republican Party was called at the time), the amendment would have gone
through more consideration, and revision, perhaps resulting in the
fixing of obvious mistakes like granting automatic citizenship to
illegal aliens' U.S.-born babies.

Now, for those of you who haven't got a clue as to what I am talking about,
let me explain.  It so happens that during the post-Civil War
reconstruction period, the states that had been part of the Confederacy
were not allowed to participate as states in the Consitutional Amendment
process for a period determined by Congress (I forget the actual number
of years decided upon -- somewhere about 8 to 10 years), as their
internal machinations were inspected and altered to conform to what the
U.S. Constitution required (and to the image that their former political
enemies wished to impose).  It was during this period of probabion and
mere partial membership in the U.S.A. that the 14th Amendment was proposed
and "ratified".  The proponents were so adament to have their bill
pass that they specifically broke the law forbidding the Southern
probationary states from participating in this process, and dared to
both control these states' legislative sessions (railroading their
bill through these legislatures without proper debate or procedure) to
get them to quickly pass the bill, and to recognize these states'
votes in the ratification process.  Since theirs was the party in
control at the time, they effectively could do whatever they wanted,
and in this case they did.

The 14th Amendment was never ratified!  Not legally.  This fact was even
taught in our public school system through the 1960's (in the North, too --
I lived in Denver), but was silenced as "politically incorrect" in the
last 20 years or so.  Americans everywhere should know this -- I know
that most over 35 at least, know it, thouth they never want to admit
it today.  I see nothing wrong with acknowledging it, and correctly
ratifying it today -- and to fix the problems it does create, like
illegal immigrants being able to have babies here, who are automatically
U.S. citizens.

I'm not a nut, just somebody who remembers what I was taught in 7th grade
U.S. history.


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