A U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer looks toward a car coming toward at the border crossing between the U.S. and Canada, in Blaine, Wash.Elaine Thompson
One of the great and defining characteristics of the American Dream - the birthright of citizenship - has come under threat amid the furor over illegal immigration. Republican politicians leading this charge should brush up on their own party's history.
That United States citizenship should be granted to anyone born within its boundaries was established in the aftermath of the Civil War. The 14th Amendment, along with other Reconstruction amendments ending slavery and enshrining the right to vote, were meant to ensure states could not deny freed slaves the privileges of citizenship.
Today, however, the fact children of illegal immigrants may use this provision to achieve U.S. citizenship has made it a target for the ever-expanding anti-immigration caucus within the Republican party. Last week, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said he supported holding hearings on the wisdom of the 14th Amendment. Many other GOP senators are onside, including Arizona's John McCain, and Jeff Sessions of Alabama.
"I'm not sure exactly what the drafters of the amendment had in mind," Mr. Sessions said recently. "But I doubt that it was that somebody could fly in from Brazil and have a child and fly back home with that child, and that child is forever an American citizen."
Regardless of whether the Congress of 1868 envisioned air travel or not, the 14th Amendment ought not to be seen as a loophole created inadvertently by a previous government. Rather it is a component part of the opportunities and freedoms inherent in America. Offering citizenship to whomever is born within your borders is a sign of an open and self-confident nation. (Canada makes a similar offer of citizenship through birth, although this is not extended to children born here to diplomats.) Regardless of the law enforcement issues at stake, talk of removing this right is merely a sop to small-minded nativists.
It is also worth noting that the Reconstruction amendments of the 1860s were largely the work of the anti-slavery faction of Radical Republicans, and can properly be seen as one of that party's greatest achievements. As columnist E.J. Dionne recently pointed out in The Washington Post, "in those days, Democrats were the racial demagogues."
Certainly any repeal of a Constitutional amendment faces a tough hurdle: two-thirds majorities in each House and approval from three-quarters of the states. But the biggest obstacles should be the legacy of the American Dream, and the Republican party's own sense of history.