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What If America is Failing To Meet A Historical Moment? [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-07-01
The President has convinced himself the 14th amendment only refers to the children of slaves and John Robert’s court has given him an assist by this week’s ruling.
The framers themselves laid out why this argument is false:
Senator Jacob Howard, a Republican from Michigan, drafted the birthright citizenship language and was clear in his intent. “This amendment which I have offered is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already, that every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States,” he explained. — From “Trump Is Wrong About Birthright Citizenship. History Proves it” by Joshua Zeitz Politico
However, Howard went on to stipulate he didn’t mean the children of diplomats-
But Howard qualified his explanation. “This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.”
An earlier Supreme Court agreed with them United States v. Wong Kim Ark.
The Robert’s court can’t hide behind originalism-
If the Supreme Court’s conservative majority actually believes in originalism, that means the legality of birthright citizenship is a matter of history — and the history is undeniable.
Did you know between 1800-1900, 14 million immigrants were admitted to America?
Did you know the 1850’s are considered the era of greatest economic expansion before the civil war? We didn’t beat it until 1950’s, a hundred years later? And the country didn’t begin collecting taxes until 1861, which means we managed to build the country solely on immigrant labor in the decade before we began collecting taxes?
Yes, there were no labor unions and life was generally crappy for immigrants but they came anyway because it was still promised to be better than their home countries. And we would have never been so successful without many children who were born to immigrants and were conferred citizenship on their birthdays.
What would’ve happened to us had we not admitted those 14 million immigrants? Albert Einstein, Lue Gim Gong, Bob Hope, Irving Berlin and Levi Strauss and so many more.
Between 2000-2020, roughly 20.5 million came here, fleeing war, climate change, and drug violence to make better lives for themselves and their children.
By forcibly deporting them, are we depriving ourselves of another economic expansion?
Are we allowing Trump’s and MAGA racism and xenophobia to make us miss another historical moment?
And by deporting them, are we ensuring retaliation from their children and grandchildren in the future? And, are we ensuring another country is the beneficiary of an economic expansion because they are willing to meet the historical moment?
Update- And now Trump wants to make it even worse by denaturalizing people.
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