Question

Statement: "Granting US citizenship must take into consideration whether parents are illegal immigrants, not whether birth occurs on USA soil."
You may take any of the following positions: "agree," "disagree," "strongly agree," or "strongly disagree" and then provide reasoning why you have this opinion.

Answer 1

• If you are born in the United States, you are automatically a citizen, a guarantee of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution that has come to be known as “birthright citizenship.
• The 14h Amendment’s citizenship clause states: “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 purpose of the clause was to guarantee citizenship to freed slaves and their descendants after the Civil War.
• Those who challenge birthright citizenship argue that illegal immigrants are not subject to U.S. jurisdiction, and so neither are their American-born children; these children, they argue, cannot therefore automatically become citizens.
• But I disagree with it,children of undocumented immigrants who were born in the United States become U.S. citizens automatically according to the law.
• Since there was no such thing as an illegal immigrant at the time of the amendment’s adoption, immigration was not restricted or regulated back then so the amendment does not apply to illegal immigrants.