Repealing the 14th Amendment Would Not Fix Our Immigration System

Marshall Fitz on why repealing the 14th Amendment is not a fix for our broken immigration system.

All Americans can agree that ending illegal immigration and fixing our broken immigration system is of paramount national importance. But we should also be able to agree that taking aim at one of the Constitution’s most fundamental provisions—the citizenship clause in the 14th Amendment—is an unwieldy, counterproductive, and potentially dangerous way to address those concerns.

Opponents of birthright citizenship cloak their arguments in legal revisionism, but those arguments fail to hide the extremism inherent in this assault on the 14th Amendment. Their opening line of attack is that the amendment’s framers didn’t mean what they said and that Congress can therefore restrict who is entitled to citizenship at birth. To reach that conclusion requires a radical reinterpretation of firmly settled constitutional law, not to mention judicial activism of the highest order.

The above excerpt was originally published in U.S. News and World Report. Click here to view the full article.

The positions of American Progress, and our policy experts, are independent, and the findings and conclusions presented are those of American Progress alone. A full list of supporters is available here. American Progress would like to acknowledge the many generous supporters who make our work possible.