Pretty good counterpoint to Trump here.

......What we call “birthright citizenship” is an ancient principle of English common law called jus soli. This principle was so widely accepted at the time of America’s founding that it was never explicitly affirmed, even as it was followed in practice (with one huge exception, which I will get to in a moment). America at its founding was a nation eager to grow and expand. Not only did it place no limits on immigration, but the Declaration of Independence had included such limits among the grievances against King George III: “He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither.” (For those who think that the Founders only wanted to encourage British immigration, note that British subjects would not have been described as “foreigners” since the colonies were, up until that point, British.)

For the Founders, rejecting jus soli or birthright citizenship would have meant either greatly restricting the growth and expansion of the new nation or, more likely, creating a system in which there was a large and growing sub-population of people who were disenfranchised in the land of their own birth—an idea totally incompatible with a government based on the consent of the governed.

Our forebears did create just such a sub-population: Africans who had been brought over as slaves, who continued to live in America for generations without even the most basic rights of citizens. It was specifically to redress this injustice that birthright citizenship was explicitly written into the Constitution in the 14th Amendment. The very first sentence of the 14th Amendment declares, “All persons born…in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” When you think about it, everything else in the 14th Amendment is kind of redundant. If former slaves are citizens, then they automatically have all the rights of citizens.

These provisions, by the way, were cornerstones of the agenda of the Republican Party. In fact, they were among our party’s founding achievements. So if you want to repeal the 14th Amendment and still call yourself a Republican—well, let’s such say you have even less sense of history than the Democrats who want to purge Thomas Jefferson from their party.

It was apparent to those who passed the 14th Amendment that it would do more than just affirm the citizenship of former slaves. In debates over this clause, some objected that it would affirm the citizenship of children from certain immigrant populations that were considered, at the time, to be undesirable—specifically, gypsies in Pennsylvania and Chinese in California. This objection was rejected, but it is instructive to recall the words of the chief opponent of birthright citizenship, Pennsylvania Senator Edgar Cowan: “[i]s it proposed that the people of California are to remain quiescent while they are overrun by a flood of immigration of the Mongol race? Are they to be immigrated out of house and home by Chinese? …It is utterly and totally impossible to mingle all the various families of men, from the lowest form of the Hottentot up to the highest Caucasian, in the same society.” Is this a tradition you really want to endorse?

Unfortunately, this is pretty much the same narrow-minded sentiment you will hear from a lot of the anti-immigration fanatics currently singing hosannahs to Donald Trump.

Excellent, Lager.

Has anyone else noticed this:

When people are ranting about building a wall around the country and arresting families and throwing them on busses back to Mexico (even if they didn't come from there)...

With all this wonderful insight into stopping illegal immigration no one, and I mean no one at all, ever, ever mentions prison sentences for people providing jobs to illegal immigants?

You know, people like hotel magnates, and senators, and congressmen, and governors?

Wonder why this is always overlooked?