FAIR Is At It Again - U.S. Immigration Fight Widens To Native Born

Anti Immigrant Group FAIR is at it again in Arizona and The United States Senate, helping to craft legislation that would deny any one born on American soil automatic citizenship.

Miriam Jordan, Jean Guerrero and Laura Meckler have a story up in today's Wall Street Journal on the growing fight to change the 14th Amendment to deny people born on American soil automatic citizenship.

The story entitled U.S. Immigration Fight Widens to Native Born can be seen HERE. Excerpts below:

The immigration debate is reviving the explosive idea of denying citizenship to children born on U.S. soil if their parents are in the country illegally.

A U.S. senator and a state lawmaker in Arizona, both central players in the battle over immigration law, separately proposed this week that "birthright" citizenship be denied to the children of illegal immigrants. They said the change would help stem the flood of illegal border crossings.

FAIR President Dan Stein is helping to spear head this campaign:

Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which calls for cracking down on all immigration to the U.S., said that citizenship as a birthright isn't automatic in many countries in the West.

"We should not allow language from 1868 to enslave our thinking...in the 21st century," Mr. Stein said.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R) is leading the fight against the children of immigrants:

"People come here to have babies. They come here to drop a child," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) said Wednesday night on Fox News. "That shouldn't be the case. That attracts people here for all the wrong reasons." Mr. Graham is a onetime partner with Democrats in crafting a proposed overhaul of immigration laws.

This legislative action in the Senate is being mirrored in Arizona, by State Senator Russell Pearce:

In Arizona, Republican state Sen. Russell Pearce, the architect of the immigration law that drew a legal challenge from the Obama administration, said he wanted to deny U.S. citizenship to children born in his state to illegal immigrants.

Changing the 14th Amendment is a significant undertaking:

At issue is the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, enacted in 1868 to ensure that states not deny former slaves the full rights of citizenship. It states, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

Mr. Pearce, like some other proponents of the change, argued that the amendment as written doesn't apply to illegal immigrants. Because illegal immigrants aren't "subject to the jurisdiction" of the U.S., as the amendment requires, they fall outside its protection, these people argue. A group of House lawmakers made a similar argument when they tried to pass legislation changing the birthright principle in 2005.

"When it was ratified in 1868, the amendment had to do with African-Americans; it had nothing to do with aliens," Mr. Pearce said. "It's got to be fixed."

Given the controversial nature of this proposal, successfully amending the Constitution would be considered a long shot. It requires a vote of two-thirds of the House and of the Senate, and must be ratified by three-fourths of state legislators.

A change in state law redefining who is a citizen would likely draw a legal challenge, as did Arizona's effort to change state immigration law.

Under Mr. Pearce's proposal, Arizona would refuse to issue a birth certificate to any child unless at least one parent could prove legal presence in the U.S. "The 14th Amendment has been hijacked and abused," Mr. Pearce said. "We incentivize people to break our laws."