This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The top legal officers from 24 states are urging the Supreme Court to fix the nation's birthright citizenship problem.
The 14th Amendment, created after the Civil War, was intended to protect the newly freed slaves and their children, but was not intended to give U.S. citizenship to every baby of every illegal alien or foreign visitor to America, President Trump has argued.
He's now being joined by attorneys general from 24 states.
The arguments were filed by attorneys general Jonathan Skrmetti, R-Tenn., and Brenna Bird, R-Iowa, and in a brief asked the Supreme Court to support Trump's argument that American citizenship isn't actually automatic for any newborn born of illegal alien parents or visitors to America.
Trump make that clarification by executive order when he took office in January, "discarding ridiculous left-wing arguments about 'birthright citizenship' — which have allowed illegals to stay in the United States with anchor babies for decades."
But leftist officials in Washington, Illinois, Oregon and Arizona sued.
A report at the Federalist noted, "If the Supreme Court ends up taking the case and rules in line with the true understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Citizenship Clause, the Trump administration could start turning the corner on removing the true number of illegals in the country."
"The idea that citizenship is guaranteed to everyone born in the United States doesn't square with the plain language of the Fourteenth Amendment or the way many government officials and legal analysts understood the law when it was adopted after the Civil War," Skrmetti said. "If you look at the law at the time, citizenship attached to kids whose parents were lawfully in the country. Each child born in this country is precious no matter their parents' immigration status, but not every child is entitled to American citizenship. This case could allow the Supreme Court to resolve a constitutional question with far-reaching implications for the States and our nation."
Leftists at entry level courts in the federal judiciary have sided, so far, with the citizenship-for-all agenda. They issued nationwide injunctions, a move that already has been rebuked by the Supreme Court.
But those justices have yet to rule on the merits of the "birthright" dispute.
The Federalist said, "The brief shows the history surrounding the ratification of the 14th Amendment and its Citizenship Clause from the 1860s through the early 1900s, laying out the proper understanding of the clause before it was twisted by opportunistic leftists who wanted to destroy the country by importing culturally unrecognizable people who refuse to assimilate."
The report said, "'Birthright citizenship' incentivizes illegal immigration, which inherently takes a toll on states both through sapping government resources meant for Americans and degrading culture and community."
The state attorneys charged, "Recent years have seen an influx of illegal aliens — over 9 million — overwhelming our nation's infrastructure and its capacity to assimilate. Conferring United States citizenship requires a more meaningful connection than mere presence by happenstance or illegality. That connection, originalist evidence repeatedly instructs, was parental domicile."
Opponents of Trump's executive order claim a federal court case from 1898 supports their argument, but it likely doesn't.
In that case a baby was born in American of two Chinese nationals, and was declared a citizen, because the parents were in the United States legally, not illegally.
Key is that the amendment applies citizenship to those who are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.
In fact, Congress in 1866 excluded from citizenship children of "persons temporarily resident" so that those who did not "owe a complete, permanent allegiance" to the U.S. would not benefit.
The report explained, "In 19th century lectures on naturalization and citizenship, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Freeman Miller explained that 'if a stranger or traveller [sic] passing through, or temporarily residing in this country, who has not himself been naturalized, and who claims to owe no allegiance to our Government, has a child born here which goes out of the country with its father, such child is not a citizen of the United States, because it was not subject to its jurisdiction.'"
States joining included: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
