Source: https://cis.org/Report/Citizenship-Grabs
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 02:25:06+00:00

Document:
The Constitution does not constitute us as ‘Platonic Guardians’ nor does it vest in this Court the authority to strike down laws because they do not meet our standards of desirable social policy, ‘wisdom,’ or ‘common sense.’ ... We trespass on the assigned function of the political branches under our structure of limited and separated powers when we assume a policymaking role.
That, however, is not how events have transpired. For the last several decades, the Supreme Court has effectively trampled on Congress’s constitutionally mandated, separate, and exclusive power and taken upon itself the task of rewriting America’s immigration laws. The Court has abused its limited authority and has become, effectively, the architect of the rules governing not only how immigrants enter and remain in America, but whether those immigrants can avail themselves of social benefits that states and even Congress have sought to limit to U.S. citizens.
Thanks to succeeding Supreme Courts, illegal immigration—not legal immigrants but aliens who have broken U.S. law to enter this country—are entitled to a public school education at the U.S. taxpayers’ expense. The Court has also ruled that despite laws to the contrary, noncitizens who are legally in the U.S. can qualify for welfare, can seek tuition assistance to attend colleges and universities, and can take competitive civil service jobs and practice law.
Before American independence, each of the thirteen colonies developed its own immigration policies. Most of these policies were geared toward encouraging immigration from Europe to help alleviate severe labor shortages throughout the vast expanse of the colonial territories.9 Land grants and exemptions from taxes were popular enticements to immigrants to settle in the New World. However, most of the colonies also had laws in place to discourage certain types of immigrants—specifically Roman Catholics.10 Many of the colonies levied head taxes on ship captains for any Catholic they brought ashore. Certain colonies offered land grants and tax benefits only to Protestants.11 As a result, the majority of the early immigrants came from Protestant England and Germany.
When Jefferson won the presidency and his party took control of both houses of Congress in 1800, the Alien and Sedition Acts were repealed. Congress also returned the residency requirement for U.S. citizenship to five years. Beyond these actions, no real effort was made by Congress to limit immigration in this country until 1875, when Congress passed the first immigration act that restricted entry of aliens to the United States.17 The act prohibited immigration by slaves, prostitutes, and Chinese “coolies.”18 Later laws imposed temporary or permanent restrictions on entry by Chinese emigrants and other groups.
Congress’s rationale for keeping naturalization an executive branch function is that deportation hearings do not determine whether an alien is guilty of any crime. By simply kicking someone out of our country, the federal government is not, in a legal sense, punishing that person.
Unfortunately, while recognizing in some cases Congress’s basic authority to write immigration law, a majority of justices on the Supreme Court have on several occasions used two constitutional provisions to insert the Court’s institutional nose under the immigration tent. The Court discovered that the equal protection and due process clauses in the Fifth22 and Fourteenth23 Amendments granted the judiciary all of the authority it will ever need to rewrite America’s immigration laws.
In other words, the Supreme Court of 1915 deferred to the judgment of the state governments to determine how public funds should be distributed—exactly as the framers of the constitution intended.
But the Court, in a number of cases over the last four decades, has determined not only that aliens—even illegal aliens—are “persons” as defined in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, but also that their status is increasingly indistinguishable from that of citizens. So while the Constitution gives to Congress the sole authority to determine how many immigrants may enter the country, how immigrants can become citizens of the United States, and whether those immigrants should be able to avail themselves of the benefits of U.S. citizenship, the Court has chosen on several occasions to ignore the express direction of the founders and usurp that authority for itself.
Blackmun also invoked a test for courts to use to decide whether a citizenship requirement for benefits from a state or federal agency is permissible. “The Court’s decisions have established that classifications based on alienage, like those based on nationality or race, are inherently suspect and subject to close judicial security.”37 In other words, lawmakers could only use noncitizenship if they could demonstrate a compelling government interest in doing so—a hurdle that would be nearly impossible to overcome.
The real question the Court should have addressed—and the one that would have profound constitutional implications—is: Who gets to determine whether aliens are eligible for certain benefits? Who sets policy? Clearly, if there is a desire to create a national standard for eligibility of federal programs, Congress should make that decision. If the program is exclusive to a particular state, the relevant state government should make that decision. The Court simply abrogated the explicit and inherent authority of those elected legislative bodies and imposed its own preference.
The Court also found that the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which guaranteed equal rights to every citizen in every state, included a protected right to travel among the states.39 The Court ruled that creating residency requirements for aliens would inhibit their right to travel. Again, the Court simply created a new constitutional right—the right to travel—and then extended that “right” to aliens.
In 1976, the Supreme Court ruled in the case Hampton v. Mow Sun Wong that citizenship was an unconstitutional requisite to holding a government job.39 In 1970, five resident alien civil service employees were dismissed from their jobs in the Post Office,40 the Heath, Education, and Welfare Department,41 and other federal agencies because it was discovered that they were not U.S. citizens as required by Civil Service Commission regulations. The five sued the commission in federal court.
The Court had to manufacture the premise that denying resident aliens a civil service job somehow infringed on their liberty to obtain a job at all, and that there was no valid reason for ensuring that government jobs go primarily to U.S. citizens.
But Brennan wasn’t done. When he moved to the question of whether the equal protection clause applied to extending social benefits to illegal aliens, he determined that because Texas had essentially delineated illegal aliens as a distinct “class” of people, they must be treated equally with every other person in the state. Not to do so in this instance—the provision of a free public education—would violate the equal protection clause.54 In Plyler, the Court decided that any conglomeration of people, regardless of the reason for their classification under law, had to be treated identically with every other class of people.
The Court, as a practical matter, is in no position to substitute its policy objectives for that of a legislature or Congress. It sits as an adjudicative body, insulated from the kind of give-and-take that occurs between the citizenry and their representatives. It has no responsibility for the kind of balancing act elected officials must undertake in weighing public priorities.
September 11, 2001, underscored that we need greater government scrutiny over our borders and immigration. Congress’s role in drafting and the executive’s authority in enforcing immigration law have never been more important, and the judiciary’s interference with these constitutional roles has never been more dangerous.
1 Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202,242 (1982).
2 U.S. Constitution Article I, § 8.
3 Don Collins, “Illegal Immigration is ravaging Arizona,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, June 22, 2004.http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/opinion/columnists/guest….
4 Yilu Zhao, “Wave of Pupils Lacking English Strains Schools,” The New York Times, August 5, 2002.
6 Stephen Dinan, “States Pay $7.4 billion to Educate Illegals; Report Notes Drain on U.S. Children,” Washington Times, August 21, 2003.
8 Jerry Seper, “Report Ties Health Care Struggles to Immigration; Increase in Uninsured Aliens Seen Straining Hospital Budgets,” Washington Times, February 26, 2004.
9 Immigration Laws 1700-1800, “Colonial Period: Legal Authority over Immigration.” www.oriole.umd.edu.
12 Immigration and naturalization are the two main classifications of law in this regard. Immigration refers to emigrants from other countries entering the United States. Naturalization concerns the process by which immigrants become citizens of the United States.
13 U.S. Constitution Amendment I, § 8.
14 Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, “Power Over Naturalization and Bankruptcy,” § 1098.
15 The term “Alien and Sedition Acts” is commonly used as shorthand for three acts of Congress: The Naturalization Act of 1798, the Aliens Act of 1798, and the Alien Enemy Act of 1798.
17 Immigration Act of 1875.
18 Ibid. Coolies were bonded workers from China, India, and other nations in Asia.
19 Naturalization Act of 1855.
20 8 U.S.C. § 1101 (2000).
21 8 U.S.C. § 1103 (2000).
22 U.S. Constitution Amendment V. The Fifth Amendment delineated the limitations on the federal government’s power over individuals. In addition to requiring that no person can be deprived of “life, liberty, or property” without due process of law, it provides for the use of a grand jury to indict someone and prohibits double jeopardy and self incrimination. The Fourteenth Amendment imposes similar restrictions on the authority of state governments.
23 U.S. Constitution Amendment XIV. The Fourteenth Amendment, in particular, was written to ensure that state governments did not treat individuals, or groups of individuals, unequally under the law, or that individuals or groups were not treated differently solely because of their race or ethnic heritage. It was not written to guarantee identical treatment for everyone everywhere, nor to provide for equal outcomes under the law for everyone.
24 Graham v. Richardson, 403 U.S. 365 (1971).
25 The Graham decision also cited other cases in which the premise of no distinction between benefits or privileges and rights should be made. These cases include Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398 (1963), Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 627 (1969), Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254 (1970), and Bell v. Burson, 402 U.S. 535 (1971).
26 Heim v. McCall, 239 U.S. 365 (1971).
28 Clarke v. Deckebach, 274 U.S. 392 (1927).
33 Graham v. Richardson, 403 U.S. 367.
39 Hampton v. Mow Sun Wong, 426 U.S. 88 (1976).
40 In 1971, the Post Office, which was a federal agency, was semi-privatized and became the U.S. Postal Service.
41 In 1979, the federal Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was reorganized into two agencies, the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services.
42 Hampton v. Mow Sun Wong, 426 U.S. at 102-03.
44 413 U.S. 634 (1973).
45 Ibid., 637. The four employees were among approximately 450 employees who actually worked for private sector nonprofit organizations that received funding through a federal agency, the United States Office of Economic Opportunity. In 1970, federal funding for those organizations was stopped and the nonprofits absorbed by a New York City agency, the Manpower Career and Development Agency (MCDA). When the jobs were moved under the city, the state’s civil service requirements became applicable and the noncitizen employees were dismissed.
49 Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982).
57 In Re Griffiths, 413 U.S. 717 (1973).
58 Nyquist v. Mauclet, 432 U.S. 1 (1977).
Mark R. Levin is the president of Landmark Legal Foundation, host of a number-one rated talk radio program on WABC in New York, and a contributing editor for National Review Online. During the Reagan Administration, he was chief of staff to the Attorney General, deputy solicitor at the Department of the Interior, deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Education, and associate director of Presidential Personnel. This Backgrounder is drawn from his new book, Men in Black: How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America.

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