Anchors Away

A little late to the game with this one, but it's so ridiculous that it bears repeating.

Discussing Immigration, Donald Trump and Jeb Bush Use an Offensive Term

What is the "offensive term" that has the left frothing at the mouth this time?

"Anchor babies"

The phrase is as offensive as the word “illegals” for many immigrants who come to America.

In 2011, it was defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as, “A child born to a noncitizen mother in a country that grants automatic citizenship to children born on its soil, especially such a child born to parents seeking to secure eventual citizenship for themselves and often other members of their family.”

But after protests from immigration advocacy groups who complained that the language is a demeaning slur, the dictionary labeled it as “offensive.”

GMAFB. These are the same people who prefer the term"undocumented worker" to "illegal immigrant."

Regardless of what they are called, a strong argument can be made that the 14th Amendment does not in fact confer automatic citizenship on children born in the U.S. whose parents - or at least mother - is here illegally.

The first clause of the 14th Amendment provides that “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”...

However, in legal circles the term "jurisdiction" includes two distinctly different ideas: "1) complete, political jurisdiction; and 2) partial, territorial jurisdiction."

Think of it this way. When a British tourist visits the United States, he subjects himself to our laws as long as he remains within our borders. He must drive on the right side of the road, for example. He is subject to our partial, territorial jurisdiction, but he does not thereby subject himself to our complete, political jurisdiction. He does not get to vote, or serve on a jury; he cannot be drafted into our armed forces; and he cannot be prosecuted for treason if he takes up arms against us, because he owes us no allegiance. He is merely a “temporary sojourner,” to use the language employed by those who wrote the 14th Amendment, and not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States in the full and complete sense intended by that language in the 14th Amendment.

The same is true for those who are in this country illegally. They are subject to our laws by their presence within our borders, but they are not subject to the more complete jurisdiction envisioned by the 14th Amendment as a precondition for automatic citizenship.

Unfortunately, the current Supreme Court won't see it that way. We're talking, after all, about the same court that justified forcing Americans to buy health insurance by categorizing the penalty for not doing so as a tax, and that interpreted “Exchange(s) established by the State..." to really mean a Federal exchange.

What makes this uproar over "anchor babies" meaningless is that if we would just secure our borders and halt the influx of illegal aliens, there would be no more anchor babies, making the whole thing moot.