...hundreds of thousands of immigrants are birthing children in the U.S. (more than three million at last count). It is assumed that they have a constitutional birthright to citizenship. As such, those children, and their attendant families, are served up a plethora of social services at taxpayer expense. They are also the anchors for a chain of migration because upon reaching age 21, the children of illegal immigrants can petition to have citizenship extended to the entire family.

But does the Constitution authorize birthright citizenship to illegal aliens?

The relevant constitutional clause concerning birthright is found in the 14th Amendment, one of three “reconstruction amendments” proposed after the War Between the States. The 13th Amendment banned slavery, the 14th ensured Due Process and Equal Protection under the law for former slaves and their children, and the 15th banned race-based qualification for voting rights.

Section 1 of the 14th Amendment (as proposed in 1866 and ratified in 1868) reads, “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.” It explicitly referred to children born to U.S. citizens and those born to aliens lawfully in the U.S.

Why did the amendment’s sponsors insist on adding, “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof”?

For insight, consider the words of Sen. Jacob Howard, co-author of the amendment’s citizenship clause. In 1866, he wrote that the amendment “will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, or who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States...”

By extension, then, it is fair to conclude that, in addition to the children of those legally in the U.S. under the above exclusion, this would apply to the children of those illegally in the U.S. —until the Supreme Court took up the question of the rights of illegal aliens to taxpayer services in 1982. In Plyler v. Doe, the judicial activists concluded that “no plausible distinction with respect to Fourteenth Amendment ‘jurisdiction’ can be drawn between resident aliens whose entry into the United States was lawful, and resident aliens whose entry was unlawful.”

But Plyler v. Doe is historically and legally inaccurate. In the context of original intent, children born to those who have entered the U.S. illegally—those who are not citizens—are not “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” One would hope, in the course of the current debate about immigration, that Congress and the courts would actually pay homage to the plain language of our Constitution.

Not much chance of that, though, especially when it’s not politically expedient...