The weather in Florida may be suffused by Arctic chill, but for Gov. Ron DeSantis, constitutional conundrums are red hot.
For the second straight day, the state’s most powerful Republican is revisiting the true meaning of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
He argued on Wednesday that, contrary to many interpretations of the foundational document, framers had no intent to extend the prerogatives of birthright citizenship to those in the country illegally.
“It is true that both the feds and the states routinely assert jurisdiction over illegal aliens (such as when they are convicted of criminal offenses in American courts) in the ordinary sense of the term — and supporters of illegal alien birthright citizenship will no doubt rely on this fact. But I don’t think that was how the provision was originally understood by the society that ratified the 14th Amendment in the 19th century,” DeSantis said, responding to a social media user named Boutros who questioned his belief that the children of non-citizens born in America are not themselves citizens.
DeSantis believes “that the language ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof’ represents a term of art and that the original meaning of the phrase did not mandate citizenship for illegal aliens.
The citizenship clause holds that “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.” Yet the position President Donald Trump, DeSantis, and others who believe in immigration restrictions subscribe to is that the children of illegal aliens are not citizens by dint of birth.
Trump’s order says, “The privilege of United States citizenship does not automatically extend to persons born in the United States … when that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth, or when that person’s mother’s presence in the United States at the time of said person’s birth was lawful but temporary, and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.”
It also claims, “The Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States. The Fourteenth Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’”
DeSantis argued Tuesday that there may not currently be “five votes on the Supreme Court for the notion that the 14th Amendment does not give birthright citizenship to illegals.”
“If there aren’t five votes then shutting down illegal alien birthright citizenship would require an amendment to the Constitution itself, which would be unlikely to get enacted as blue states would almost certainly refuse to ratify it,” DeSantis noted.
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