Some people just don't understand what the constitution is about. Especially what the "Bill of Rights" and the other ammendments are about. They are never about taking away the rights of citizens. They are about either expanding those rights which "shall not be infringed upon" by the government or limiting power of government. Ammendments of the constitution are not swords to be used against people with the force of the Federal government.
That is what bills, laws and statutes are about. If a lawmaker wants to propose a law making something illegal or banned, they can certainly do so. And if a majority of his or her fellow lawmakers agree, then it goes to the executive for their endorsement, which is done with the President's signature on the federal level.
That law then may be challenged in court as to it's "Constitutionality." If challenged, it is the courts area of jurisdiction to see if the law meets the requirements of our Constitution. One does not ammend the Constitution to take away rights of people. If you want to challenge someone's right to do something, make a law and see if it's Constitutional, not the other way around.
We did make that mistake once. When we outlawed booze with the 18th ammendment. Of course, lawmakers soon repealed that mistake with the 21st ammendment.
But some people are still not interested in actually working the system properly, They want the "fix" to be in far in advance. These are the people who want to make it "Constitutional" to criminalize behavior they disapprove of. Whether it be gay marriage, flag burning or abortion. Or even the latest hysterical panic cry from the radical right, citizenship.
Some want to take away a child's citizenship rights that are granted to every person who is born here. In otherwords, what our founders set up was a "system" if you will, or a belief that anyone who is born on the soil of liberty will always have a home here and can call this land his or her own.
I like that. That makes me proud to be an American. And the second we change that ideal and start excluding people because we think their motives may be questionable, we have trouble.
1st off, the people in question, the illegal immigrants who are coming here escaping a 3rd world hell and the preganant women who are amongst them are hardly the 1st people with that motive, Not only was many a boat that washed up on shore filled with women who wanted to stay pregnant till they got here so their child would be an American, so were the caravans and such that have rolled over from Canada since the post - revolutionary war days.
And it says something about our country that we are unique that mothers would risk life and limb just so their child could be an American. I don't ever recall anyone breaking their ass to get into the USSR or Iran or Britan or anywhere just to do that. ANd if a mother wants her child to be an American that bad, I am all for it. That is the stock that our next generations of patriots are born. Our nation is filled with patriots and heroes that were "sons and daughters of immigrants."
And where some may just be a victim to their own hates and bigotries, and resent them for being here and want to punish them with our constitution, that can't be questioned, by ammending it to somehow strip these children of their citizenship. We can't let that idea take hold and make our Constitution the victim of hatred and mob law that wants to close the door behind them and deny others what every child has enjoyed, regardless of their parent's country of origin.
Granting that automatic citizenship to the newly born on our soil makes our beacon of freedom shine a little brighter. Taking that away dims it a little further.
But don't mistake that as some "soft" stance on immigration. If the government actually did enforce the border better, actually went after employers who hired illegals and dried up the jobs we wouldn't have this problem and this wouldn't even be an issue.
If we dry up the job for that illegal, they won't stay. The family will go home. But that child will always have Lady Liberty as a refuge if the other nation is not accepting or acceptable.
Or if there is a reasonable guest worker program set up, and that family qualifies, they will stay. And I am confident that those immigrants will foster tomorrow's greatest Americans.
Either way, America wins.
But if we part from the ideal that our founders had in granting citizenship to any child who is born here, we are in serious trouble as a nation. At least the nation we were. We will go a long way in becoming just another country that does what it can to homogonize everything into a neat little package which most won't even notice until they are the target of exclusion. But by then it will be too late.
When we ammend the Constitution, it is to make us a more free people. Not less free. If we keep that in mind, I believe, we won't need to even discuss the ridiculous notion of somehow choosing which born children get to be citizens. A notion that is in my mind, completely Un-American and at least at the present time, Unconstitutional.