Rights are for All
To the Editor:
“There are literally millions of aliens within the jurisdiction of the United States. The Fifth Amendment, as well as the Fourteenth Amendment, protects every one of these persons from deprivation of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” – Justice John Paul Stevens (writing for the Supreme Court in Mathews v. Diaz, 1976) Ms. Mary Kendall Dawson’s recent letter regarding constitutional rights and citizenship contains several claims that are unsupported or in direct conflict with the actual text of the Constitution and/or a century of legal precedent. If we are to have a civil discourse, we must start with the facts of the document(s) we all revere.
First, the idea that the Constitution only protects citizens or legal residents is a major misunderstanding. The 14th Amendment, Section 1, explicitly states that no State shall “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.” The founders and the authors of the amendments purposefully used the word “person,” not “citizen,” for these protections. In Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886), the Supreme Court confirmed these provisions are “universal in their application, to all persons within the territorial jurisdiction.” Furthermore, in Zadvydas v. Davis (2001), the Court held that the Due Process Clause applies to all persons within the U.S., whether their presence is “lawful, unlawful, temporary, or permanent.”
Second, the author claims that “anchor babies” have no basis in law. However, the first line of the 14th Amendment states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” This is a fundamental pillar of our laws. In the landmark case United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), the Supreme Court ruled that a child born on U.S. soil to non-citizen parents is a citizen by birth. This is not a progressive lie; it is established constitutional law.
Third, there is no language in the Constitution stating that people without status “must be removed or imprisoned as soon as they are discovered.” Article I, Section 8, gives Congress the power to establish rules for naturalization, but the specific enforcement processes are matters of statutory law. Even then, the Court ruled in Plyler v. Doe (1982) that children cannot be denied a basic education based on their immigration status, noting that such a denial violates the Equal Protection Clause.
Finally, the suggestion that Dreamers should simply “become citizens” before attending college is a logical impossibility under our current system. These individuals cannot apply for citizenship because there is currently no legal pathway for them to do so. Suggesting they follow a path that does not exist is a “Catch-22” that ignores the reality of our current immigration code.
We should all take the author’s advice and read the Constitution and the Federalist Papers. When we do, we find a document that protects the individual rights of all “persons” and establishes birthright citizenship as the law of the land.