[scottw]

[QUOTE=RIROCKHOUND;811648] If you believe in the constitution as written, for now, children of illegals who were born here, are leagal. Do you punish them for their parents?QUOTE}

I believe in the Constitution as written...... (hope you get to read this Bryan)..."working in academia", can you show us where in the Constitution "as written" it provides automatic citizenship for the children(born here) to those that have come or are here illegally?

Actually, it's the 14th Ammendment written after the civil war and then an 1898 Supreme Court decision which is cited/distorted and allowing this to occur...

After the Civil War, the 14th Amendment (overturning, in part, Dred Scott v. Sandford, which said that no black could be a U.S. citizen) clarified the conditions of citizenship: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the States wherein they reside."

Many today assume the second half of the citizenship clause ("subject to the jurisdiction thereof") merely refers to the day-to-day laws to which we are all subject. But the original understanding referred to political allegiance. Being subject to U.S. jurisdiction meant, as then-Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Lyman Trumbull stated, "not owing allegiance to anybody else [but] subject to the complete jurisdiction of the United States." The author of the provision, Sen. Jacob Merritt Howard of Michigan, pointed out that the jurisdiction language "will not, of course, include foreigners."

[Read more about U.S. immigration reform.]

It was in 1898 (in United States v. Wong Kim Ark) that the Supreme Court expanded the constitutional mandate, holding that the children of legal, permanent residents were automatically citizens. While the decision could be (and is often) read more broadly, the court has never held that the clause confers automatic citizenship on the children of temporary visitors, much less of illegal residents.

The broader reading is a constitutional misreading. Not only does it grant citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants, it also gives full due-process rights to the likes of Taliban fighter Yasir Hamdi (born in the United States of visiting Saudi parents and captured fighting U.S. soldiers 20 years later in Afghanistan).

But it is the principle of the matter that is most problematic. The broad claim of automatic birthright citizenship traces its roots more to the feudal concept of perpetual allegiance of subjects to kings, rather than equal rights and the consent of the governed. It violates bedrock American principles and undermines the rule of law.