Georgia Rep Wants to Gut the 14th Amendment
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AlterNet: In a cynical move to build support for his campaign for the governorship of Georgia, U.S. Representative Nathan Deal has rekindled racist fervor to gut birthright citizenship and the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. By doing so he has once again -boldly and baldly--positioned himself at the intersection of racism and immigration. HR1868, the "Birthright Citizenship Act of 2009," would permit citizenship status to children birthed in the U.S. only if at least one parent is a citizen or legal permanent resident. Now co-sponsored by 73 Members of the U.S. House of Representatives--53 of whom are members of the FAIR-fueled anti-immigrant House Immigration Reform Caucus (HIRC)--the bill rekindles the fervor for dismantling a cornerstone of rights won by African Americans in the post-Civil War era. Ratified in 1868, the 14th Amendment abolished the "Black Codes" that the former slave states had enacted to prevent newly freed African Americans the equal rights granted through citizenship, and overturned the drastic rulings set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court in the infamous Dred Scott case of 1857. In that case, the Court set forth a legal framework for institutional racism in America when it declared that African Americans were not citizens and that they were "so inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." The chances of moving HR1868 are slim, which even Representative Deal admits. Yet he continues to press it in his campaign and in the Congress, stirring the old embers of racism in a state--and a nation--still seeking to overcome its long, sordid legacy of discrimination against African Americans, and reminding voters of the old battles of white supremacy. A bid to cut a similar path is currently underway via The "California Taxpayer Protection Act," a 2010 ballot initiative to put an end to "birth tourism" of "illegal aliens" in the U.S. Such contemporary, immigrant-focused efforts to gut the 14th Amendment are usually looked upon as political grandstanding, with virtually no possibility of gaining traction in law or in the public arena. The warnings of history, however, ought to sober such an assessment.
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