Funny how the people who cite Elk don’t cite Wong Kim Ark (1898) which sets out the common law exceptions — the children of diplomats and hostile occupying forces — along with the treaty exception of ‘Indians not taxed’ that should be construed, narrowly, to fall under the ‘jurisdiction’ subclause.

If Dr. Paul wants to strike the jus soli citizenship clause from the 14th amendment and make solely it a congressional power, as with the power to legislate on naturalization, the amendment process is clear. But tweaking with the meaning of ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof’ won’t do.

The other reason he is so popular with the Majority, is he is ‘unpopular’ with the minority that is polled.

He is also a threat to the military industrial complex and its propaganda wing, the main stream media, and the people are standing up to say, we are ready for Ron Paul, the constitution and real change.

I don’t know why I didn’t remember this earlier. I hate to add to the fire here, but I too am skeptical of this claim. Economist Mark Thornton talked about this briefly last month: http://mises.org/multimedia/mp3/Thornton-ASSC-11-02-2007.mp3. If you go to the very end of this podcast and listen to his response to the last question (the rest of the podcast is pretty informative, but only the last question applies to this discussion), you hear him talk about how the housing bubble directly contributed to illegal immigration and remittances. I certainly think that more information is needed before this is known for certain, but it seems like a very logical explanation. Of course, if this is true, then Ron Paul would still have a better solution for dealing with the problem (if it were even a problem by the time he got into office).

One question from a legal standpoint:

When children born in this country are the offspring of ambassadors, diplomats, etc, are they US Citizens or citizens of their home countries?

You mean this Wal-Mart, which helped bring quality food and jobs to an area of Mexico that used to be at the mercy of corrupt local politicians to provide their sustenance?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117306306522126623-search.html?KEYWORDS=southern+hospitality&COLLECTION=wsjie/6month

We need to get rid of the federal government programs that make people want to milk our system just because they can, and if states want to provide services to foreigners, they should absolutely be allowed to — an interesting issue of our day is can a city be a safe-harbor for foreign residents and can we streamline the Visa granting process?

We also need to export a free-market instead of Walmart and coercion so that people in other countries aren’t subjects to our international product pipelines.

“He seems to be for dismantling the welfare state. Although he’s going to start with benefits for illegals firsts.”

When I said Ron Paul’s policy was a case of using one bad policy to justify another I was saying that he was using the existence of the welfare state to justify restricting immigration…not the other way around. Until the consequences of the welfare state become clearly evident, it’s never going to be removed. Politicians who want to get re-elected never take government benefits from their constituents until the economics force them to. People who receive benefits, people who work for government welfare agencies, influential people who “champion” the poor by demanding (or more accurately, extorting) benefits from politicians all have a vested interest in seeing it stay in place and a lot of them either vote or can rally large groups of people who vote. As Milton Friedman pointed out in “Free to Choose”, the negative income tax proposal he helped push basically died because the special interests who benefit from the welfare state raised enough of a stink to get the politicians to kill it off. It’ll be the same situation today…people don’t like to rock the boat if they don’t think it’s absolutely necessary.

If Ron Paul wants to get rid of the welfare state, he’ll open the borders and let the immigrants apply for benefits the same as everyone else…if he just limits his immigration reform to closing the borders and stripping benefits from the illegals you can pretty much guarantee the welfare state’s not going to change in any meaningful way.

Kind of wierd that he would be so seemingly anti-Immigrant

Anti-illegal immigrant

There is no ambiguity here.”

I agree that there is no ambiguity.

There was clearly no intent for children of aliens (legal or not) to be recognized as US citizens, even if said children are born on the steps of the Capitol. The 1965 Immigration Act was required in order to distort the original intent of the 14th Amendment.

See Rep. John Bingham’s (the amendment’s author) testimony, or take the time to read the SCOTUS decisions (Elk v. Wilkins, 1884) for further clarification.

if that was the meaning of the second clause, wouldn’t it be redundant?

Kind of wierd that he would be so seemingly anti-Immigrant when he has so many Hispanics in his Congressional District.

I don’t know. He seems to be for dismantling the welfare state. Although he’s going to start with benefits for illegals firsts.

Doug,

There’s illegal immigration for work and then there’s illegal immigration for leeching off the social services. Dr. Paul is clearly targeting the latter sort of illegal immigration.

But the targets of the two policies are different. Illegal immigrants here for work are mostly men. Illegal immigrants here for social services are most women and children.

Case law going back since before the 14th Amendment was ratified makes it clear that as long as someone is within the territory of the United States, they are subject to it’s jurisdiction.

There is no ambiguity here.

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, AND subject to the jurisdiction thereof…”

Ron Paul is correct on the 14th Amendment.