No. of Recommendations: 1
As I've said before, I wouldn't mind limiting birthright citizenship as long as we followed the Constitutional steps and had a reasonably full discussion on it. I just won't support it if all we're doing is being cruel due to someone's bigotry.
Part of the reason the 14th says what it says, may be the Federal government did not have a standardized process for becoming a naturalized citizen. There was a naturalization law passed in 1790, but it was highly decentralized, with state, local, and federal, courts pretty much doing their own thing. There was not a uniform, Federal system until 1906. So, at the time of the 14th being ratified, the sense may have been there was no practicable way to separate people born here, based on the nationality of their parents. (there is a hysterical story of my grandmother being kidnapped, as a small child, and growing up with an assumed name, because people didn't have "papers" more than a century ago)
Steve
