Amendment intent was clear from the start

First, let's acknowledge that the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment was written in direct response to the disastrous 1857 Dred Scott ruling, which held that enslaved or freed Black Americans could not be citizens. But we don't have to guess whether the framers of the amendment intended birthright citizenship to apply to the broader immigrant population. This issue was directly debated during the 1866 Senate debates.

Sen. Edgar Cowan of Pennsylvania argued against the amendment because he did not want the children of Chinese immigrants in California or “Gypsies” in Pennsylvania to automatically become citizens. He asked if the amendment would naturalize the children of those who “owe no allegiance to the United States.” Instead of reassuring Cowan that the amendment was narrow and only for former slaves, the framers doubled down on its broad scope.

Sen. John Conness of California responded by stating that while he knew some people harbored deep prejudices against the Chinese, he fully supported giving birthright citizenship to their children born on U.S. soil.

Likewise, the hotly debated “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” wording was explicitly addressed in those debates. The author of this clause, Sen. Jacob Howard of Michigan, explicitly defined who it was meant to exclude: “This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.”

It should now be quite clear at this point what an empty argument the dissenting conservative justices claiming to be originalists and textualists bring to the table.

Roger Tucker

Mundelein