So particular was the Fourteenth Amendment that it specifically excluded Native Americans. Why? Because they weren’t under our jurisdiction. (That would have to wait until after Calvin Coolidge passed the Indian Naturalization Act of 1924 and extended citizenship to Native Americans still living on reservations.)
This jurisdictional question is rather obvious when you think about it. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, born in the United States, can’t be prime minister and still run for president. It’s nice to think that my father’s political hero, Winston Churchill, born to an American mum, could’ve been president, but he was quintessentially British. Texas transplants like Sen. Ted Cruz (born in Canada) and Congressman Dan Crenshaw (born in Scotland) to American parents are subject to the jurisdiction of America, and so they too can run for president. I suspect both will.
No, the Fourteenth Amendment was about making slaves free. There are only two ways to become American—“by natural law or by national law,” by blood or by choice. We trivialize both paths by allowing our courts and think tanks to undermine those legal categories in the service of the corporate slave power. For while the Civil War ended legal slavery, illegal slavery—human trafficking—continues to be rampant, if not wholly unabated. Once again, business and political interests want to count virtual slaves as free people for the purposes of keeping power.
Under a misreading of the Constitution by our Supreme Court, the Department of Commerce counts illegal aliens for the purposes of congressional apportionment. Bring in as many illegal aliens as you want, the federal government implicitly says to the states. The more you bring in, the more you get to keep and expand your power in the House of Representatives. Sound familiar?
There are boroughs throughout the U.S. where there are few voters but tons of illegal aliens. To have a say, all those aliens need to do is have a kid who—under a mistaken understanding of the Constitution—becomes a citizen. It’s big business birthing babies in America. Victoria Kim and Frank Shyong reported in the Los Angeles Times on a raid against one such practice where “for fees starting at $38,000, the [‘maternity tourism’ hospital] guides pregnant women through the process.” The details have to be quoted to be believed.
“[The] U.S. might refuse entry [if] the belly is too big,” one business stated on its website, advising women to travel at twenty-four to thirty weeks into their pregnancy, according to an affidavit. “The size of the belly is quite important to determine when you should arrive in Los Angeles.”
The businesses, known as “maternity hotels” or “birthing centers,” present a headache for local government and law enforcement because it is not necessarily illegal for foreign nationals to give birth in the U.S. Many agencies openly advertise services offering assistance in getting newborns a U.S. passport and extolling the benefits that come with American citizenship, including public education and immigration benefits for parents.
Chinese scammers, finally charged under the Trump administration, weren’t subtle. They called one corrupt organization of this kind You Win USA. According to indictments charging such criminal enterprises, three businesses sold the benefits of giving birth in America, which has “the most attractive nationality,” “better air” than China, “priority for jobs in U.S. government” (just what you want from a country with a history of spying on us), superior educational resources that include “free education from junior high school to public high school,” a more stable political situation, and the potential to “receive your senior supplement benefits when you are living overseas.”
America is not just a constitution, idea, or set of values. America is our home. And we must do everything to protect our home.
During a trip to the U.S.-Mexico border in Yuma, Arizona, I met patriotic Americans working in the U.S. Border Patrol. If she had her way, my colleague AOC would fire them all and denigrate the role they play in safeguarding our home from uninvited intruders. Almost all were of Hispanic heritage. They spoke with disgust of cartel leaders who would sneak their baby mamas (or is it baby mamacitas?) across the border late in pregnancy so that their children—proven to be the next generation of cartel talent—would have the trappings and legal benefits of American citizenship. El Chapo’s sons and fellow cartel bosses’ sons are Americans by law. The greatest nation in human history is getting played—and rather easily—by Third World narcos.
Indeed, every single one of the children born in these criminals’ care is as American as you or me. Or so the defenders of birthright citizenship—really a form of fraud—would have you believe. Nobody knows how many children become citizens in this way, but the State Department estimates that “thousands of children” are born in the U.S. each year to people who are either visiting or conducting business on nonimmigrant visas. This isn’t “One man, one vote” but Boss Tweed-style politics where criminal organizations take advantage of what our ruling elite’s asinine abstractions permit. Don’t hate the players. Hate the game. Then change it.
But there are few who want to change the game. They play word games instead. The language of immigration itself is designed to obfuscate reality. An “undocumented” immigrant may, the language implies, become documented. They didn’t break in without permission—they’re just missing some paperwork. A “migrant” sounds like someone who can’t be stopped by a border any more than you can stop the migration of birds or the butterflies. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist—and illegal immigrant—Jose Antonio Vargas even wrote a book whose subtitle, Notes of an Undocumented Citizen, highlighted the oxymoron.
The Left often talks about the “stakeholders” in a community whenever there’s a project they don’t like, but they seem positively incurious about how unchecked immigration affects the body politic. The research has been extensive. Professor George Borjas of Harvard—we won’t hold that affiliation against him—who
