WASHINGTON - The architects of Arizona's toughest-in-the-nation immigration law have turned their attention to birthright citizenship, joining with lawmakers from other states Wednesday to unveil legislation aimed at forcing the federal courts to reconsider the constitutionality of granting U.S. citizenship to everyone born in the United States.

The legislation

The children of illegal immigrants must be prevented from automatically becoming citizens in order to stop "nothing less than an invasion" of foreigners across U.S. borders, said Pennsylvania state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, a Republican and founder of State Legislators for Legal Immigration, which is pushing the legislation.

Metcalfe and other members of the group said at a press conference that they hope their efforts will result in a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court stating that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was not meant to grant citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants.

Experts in constitutional law maintain that that's unlikely because the framers of the amendment in the 1860s clearly intended to grant citizenship to anyone born in the United States regardless of their parents' status.

"Since the late 19th century, the Supreme Court has clearly said that all born in the United States are U.S. citizens," said Erwin Chemerinsky, the founding dean of the University of California, Irvine School of Law. "This would be a dramatic change in the law, and it's very unlikely to happen."

Civil rights groups also announced Wednesday that they have formed a new coalition, Americans for Constitutional Citizenship, to fight the legislators' efforts.

"The purported purpose of this insidious proposal is to help reform our nation's immigration system," said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. "But the real purpose in creating a two-tiered group of citizens is something far darker, far more divisive and, we believe, decidedly un-American."

The lawmakers who unveiled the model bill acknowledged that the legislation, even if passed by state legislatures, would have no immediate effect on the children of illegal immigrants or their families.

The draft bill defines who is and isn't a citizen of a particular state. But it also says that state citizenship doesn't carry with it any special rights, benefits, privileges or immunities under law. Babies born to illegal immigrants in states that pass the legislation would not be stripped of any of the current rights or benefits they receive, the lawmakers said.

Instead, the bill, if passed, is designed to draw a legal challenge from immigration advocates over the definition of a U.S. citizen and force the issue into the federal courts for clarification of the 14th Amendment.

"The bottom line: What we want is our day in court," said Arizona state Rep. John Kavanagh, one of the main supporters of Arizona's controversial Senate Bill 1070, which makes it a state crime to be in the U.S. illegally.

Kavanagh and Arizona state Sen. Ron Gould, both Republicans, said they plan to introduce legislation in the next few weeks that would define what it means to be an Arizona citizen. The bill also is supported by Arizona state Senate President Russell Pearce, one of the authors of SB 1070.

That definition would say that an Arizona citizen must be a U.S. citizen, who would be defined as someone who is born in the United States and has at least one parent who owes no allegiance to any foreign sovereignty. Naturalized U.S. citizens also would be considered Arizona citizens.

Kavanagh and Gould both said they expect the Arizona Legislature to pass the bill, most likely in April.

Metcalfe said lawmakers in about 20 states have expressed interest in introducing the bill in their state legislatures. In addition to Metcalfe and the Arizona lawmakers, state legislators from South Carolina and Oklahoma spoke in favor of the bill Wednesday.

State Legislators for Legal Immigration, which has members from state legislatures in 40 states, announced the legislation at the National Press Club. Their press conference was interrupted several times by immigrant rights' activists who shouted that the legislation was racist and inhumane and held up a sign saying "Protect the 14th Amendment."

The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1868 and states 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."

The amendment's primary intent was to guarantee citizenship to African-Americans, particularly former slaves. The question of whether the authors also intended to allow the children of illegal immigrants to automatically become citizens has been a matter of debate. The dispute focuses on the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof." Opponents of birthright citizenship argue that illegal immigrants are not subject to U.S. jurisdiction.

Others say that the words merely were meant to exclude U.S.-born children of foreign diplomats or occupying enemy armies, the two well-known exceptions to birthright citizenship under English common law. American Indians also were left out because the U.S. government considered their tribes to be quasi-sovereign.

Garrett Epps, an expert on the 14th Amendment and a law professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, said the state legislators either don't understand the amendment or are purposely misstating its intent. He maintains that illegal immigrants clearly fall under the jurisdiction of the U.S. government and state governments and can be sued, arrested, charged and incarcerated for violating federal and state laws.

"The historical record on this is very clear," Epps said. "The proponents of citizenship-stripping basically misstate the record, quote parts of the original debate and then leave out all the parts that don't support their position. ... This is about politics, not law."

Kris Kobach, a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law who helped draft SB 1070 for Arizona lawmakers, said the birthright citizenship bill does not attempt to rewrite the 14th Amendment or usurp the federal government's power to make immigration law.

Instead, he said, it revives the concept of state citizenship and asserts a state's authority to define the terms of that citizenship.

"It's a very calculated first step," he said.

In addition to unveiling a draft bill, the legislators proposed a separate plan that encourages states to enter into compacts with one another to change their birth certificate systems to note on birth records whether a person's parents were U.S. citizens or not.

Any compact would have to be approved by Congress, which is considered unlikely in the Democratic-led Senate.