re: #13 albusteve

is there any rationale behind this amendment?…just gift the child with citizenship because of geography?…then what of the parents?…if you support an open free for all with regard to illegal/legal immigrants just say so

The fourteenth ammendment was passed because the newly reconstructed South was finding new and creative ways to deny citizenship to the recently freed slaves. They had to make geography the basis of citizenship, because it couldn’t be gotten around.

(Also, kids born in this country to immigrant parents had been considered Americans for a long time, starting with people like Benjamin Franklin.

I understand that it has become an immigration problem, but the fourteenth ammendment only extended to blacks what had been taken for granted for whites for a long time.