US Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) behind 14th Amendment repeal

Oct 30, 2018

Press Release

“I am very happy that my legislation will soon be adopted by the White House as national policy.” Washington, D.C.- Congressman Steve King, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, releases the following statement in the wake of news reports that President Trump intends to restore the plain meaning of the 14th Amendment by ending the mistaken practice of granting American citizenship at birth to the children of illegal aliens. King is the recognized leader in Congress on this effort, and is the lead author of HR 140, a bill ending “birthright citizenship’ that he has introduced in each Congress since 2011.
“I am delighted to learn that President Trump intends to end automatic citizenship at birth for the children of illegal aliens whose parents have no ties, and owe no allegiance, to the United States,” said King. “Granting ‘birthright citizenship’ is a historical mistake which attempts to erase the phrase ‘and subject to the jurisdiction thereof’ out of the 14th Amendment in defiance of what the framers of that amendment were attempting to achieve.   Ending ‘birthright citizenship’ for illegal aliens will decimate the disgusting ‘birth tourism’ industry, and it will ensure that illegal aliens cannot use ‘anchor babies’ in order to take advantage of our overly generous welfare system. I commend the President for his actions, and I am very happy that my legislation will soon be adopted by the White House as national policy.”
The operative text of the 14th Amendment reads as follows:
“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. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Congressman King has written extensively on the legal scholarship behind his effort to restore the original meaning of the 14th Amendment. Those wishing additional background information are encouraged to read this King op-ed: Ending Birthright Citizenship Does Not Require A Constitutional Amendment.
An excerpt:
“By its own terms, the language in the amendment precludes the notion of universal automatic birthright citizenship. It would have been quite simple for the language to exclude ‘and subject to the jurisdiction thereof’ to accomplish the goal of bestowing citizenship on any child born in the United States no matter the status of their parents. The 14th Amendment’s addition of a jurisdictional requirement to the territorial requirement, however, denies any interpretation that birth alone grants citizenship.
Counter to this logic, proponents of universal automatic birthright citizenship claim that those born in the United States necessarily are subject to the jurisdiction of the country. However, this renders the language ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof’ superfluous. Why would the drafters of the 14th Amendment include this qualifier at all if it was met simply by virtue of being born in the United States? The legislative history outlined below will make clear that the addition of ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof’ was designed specifically to make sure the people granted citizenship did not have divided political loyalties.”