Introduction:

So yesterday the news blew up with a statement from the president that he was going to sign an executive order that would deny “birthright citizenship” to the children of illegal aliens. The practice of establishing “anchor babies” as pitons on the rock face of daisy chain immigration (How’s that for a metaphor? One of my best efforts, really) is a practice that the president is resolved to end.

U.S. President Donald Trump displays an executive order on immigration policy after signing it in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S., June 20, 2018. REUTERS/Leah Millis – RC1C220D70C0

Now of course the president does not have the authority to amend the Constitution by means of an executive order. Not only would that be illegal, it would be tyranny to attempt it. Thus, say, if the president were to sign an executive order that granted an additional senator to every state, while California and New Jersey were still limited to two senators, such an action would be laughed at all the way up to the Supreme Court, and laughed at all the way home again.

But that is not what we are dealing with here. If the president were to sign such an order, he would not be overturning any aspect of the Constitution. He would be overturning an ambiguous and very dubious interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, an interpretation that began in 1982 when it was sneeveled into the footnote of a decision by Justice Brennan. So once Trump signed the executive order, it would be challenged in court, ipso pronto, and the Supreme Court would then decide on the subject, directly, for the first time, and about time.

A Brief History:

The Fourteenth Amendment does not grant birthright citizenship to the children of illegals. What it did, in the aftermath of the Civil War, was grant citizenship to freed blacks. The intent was to reverse the implications of the infamous Dred Scott case.

“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” (14.1).

The amendment was adopted in 1868, and was dealing with the aftermath of slavery, and an appalling war. The amendment did not apply willy nilly, in every direction. In 1884, an Indian named John Elk took his case to the Supreme Court, arguing that he was an American citizen because he was born here, and he lost that case. The reason he lost his case was found in that subject to the jurisdiction clause. Indians were subject to their own Native American jurisdictions, and so the Fourteenth Amendment did not apply to them. Another Supreme Court case a few years later (1898) did settle a birthright citizenship for children of legal immigrants who were born here. American Indians were made citizens in a law that was passed in 1924. Because illegal aliens were subject to no jurisdictions at all, they were not considered citizens, even if born here, until Brennan’s 1982 footnote.

Given all this, it is not surprising that our understanding of the subject is in a frightful muddle. The Supreme Court does need to deal with it. And those who are hyperventilating over Trump’s high-handed disregard for “the Constitution” need to breathe into a paper bag or something.

Citizens and Humans:

Now before we can make any real progress on this front, we need to deal with another confusion first. We need to come to grips with what’s wrong with human rights.

And of course, put that way, every Christian ought to say that there is nothing wrong with human rights. That would be correct, provided we are defining human rights properly. But because we have neglected the teaching of civics for so long, and we have additionally neglected the theological underpinnings of civics for about the same length of time, we don’t understand the difference between a citizen and a person. Denying that someone is a citizen of your country is not the same thing as denying that he is a person, created in the image of God.

Citizenship can be withheld from someone, and no injustice done. The privileges of citizenship can be withheld also, and no injustice done. If I am vacationing in England, and I notice they have an election on, and I attempt to vote in it, their brusque dismissal of me at the polling station would not be an outrage. My behavior would be the outrage.

And that is why, when caravans approach our southern border, and our evangelical leaders start talking about how the people in that caravan are “created in the image of God”—as though that were somehow in any way a matter of dispute—their behavior is outrageous. It is a central part of the muddle. Citizenship is a privilege, not a human right.

Suppose I am a clerk at the DMV, and an illegal alien comes in to apply for a drivers’ license. Suppose further that I say something like ummmm, and suddenly, behind my left shoulder, I notice an evangelical thought leader hectoring me on how this poor woman is created in the image of God, and inasmuch as ye did to the least of these, ye have done also and so on. A quaver comes into my voice when I start to wonder aloud whenever did I deny Jesus a drivers’ license . . . not to mention wondering (but this time not aloud) whether Jesus would really jump the fence in pursuit of food stamps. Anyhow, all of that mattereth not, because anyone who withholds citizenship privileges is promptly accused of hating the image of God in the other person. But to shift the discussion from a privilege to a right in this way is the same move that is routinely practiced by the progressives—disagree with us about anything, and you’re a hater.

Every right places a corresponding obligation on others. A right to life means that all others must respect that right by not murdering. This is in line with the law of God. The right to life is a true human right. A right to property means that all others must not steal. This also lines up with the law of God. Property rights are human rights. But a right to be paid fifteen dollars an hour means that someone else has the obligation to pay fifteen dollars an hour, and if you enforce that understanding of rights you are in effect enslaving the person who is conscripted to pay the wage.

If citizenship were a human right, then we would have the obligation to confer it upon all who wanted it. But it is a privilege not a right.

A Complication:

Getting rid of nuisances like birthright citizenship is an essential step in real immigration reform.

In a country that is governed by the law of God, the free movement of individuals across the border would not be restricted. One of the things that would greatly help us all in not restricting it would be the absence of confusion on the whole subject. For example, what is the status of a pregnant Canadian woman who took the wrong ride at Disneyworld and gave birth a month early? Is she now, against her will, the mother of yet one more American?

Once we remove our confusions about rights and privileges, we should be entirely open to the free movement of migrant workers, tourists, resident aliens, and so on. The reason this is such a bone of contention is that the globalist imperative essentially wants to make citizenship of particular nations into a triviality. They are doing this by means of confusion and mass immigration, which has the effect of inflating the currency of citizenship.

And that does not appear to me to be accidental.