Fourteenth Amendment is All That Stands Between America and Fascism

James G. Birney Laid the Foundation for Republicans Who Now Object

August 15, 2010
By: Dave Rogers

"For "pro-life" politicians to suggesting making outlaws of infants is particularly disturbing."

That sums up the opinion of one noted constitutional scholar, Garret Epps, law professor at the University of Baltimore, about attacks on the Fourteenth Amendment by right wing politicians.

As you no doubt know, the Fourteenth Amendment is the document, ratified in 1868, that provided "equal justice" and "due process" for all Americans. It overturned the Dred Scott decision that said that blacks were not citizens and never had been.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, is leading the charge by suggesting that children born to immigrants be denied American citizenship.

Sen. Graham cannot be unaware of the fact that we need new citizens.

We need workers to pay taxes, to add to the public commonweal, to fight in our wars (albeit some of them speciously grounded).

We need new blood to replace our sagging birth rate.

We need the brains that immigrants bring to address our thorny problems.

This is the most ironic fact -- Republicans who originally sponsored anti-slavery measures, forced the Civil War to protect the rights of blacks, and promulgated the Fourteenth Amendment -- now to lead the opposition to that measure.

It is truly an astounding, and degrading incident in the history of the Republican Party, the party of historically exemplary motives regarding freedom and equality.

If those born in the United States are not citizens, what are they? They cannot be aliens because they were not born in another country outside the borders of the U.S.

By denying them citizenship, would we be creating a host of men and women without a country?

By discarding the Fourteenth Amendment would we deny citizenship, say, to the child of a couple from Canada who happened to be across the river in Detroit when the mother went into labor? Or how about the wife of a diplomat from a South American country who gave birth in Washington, D.C.? Could we really proclaim them a citizen of their home country regardless of place of birth?

Would visitors from foreign lands be forced to flee, to return home, or to go to Mexico to ensure their child was not born disenfranchised?

Our welcoming of immigrants, enshrined on the Statue of Liberty, has traditionally been the beacon for millions of foreigners. Those immigrants are our strength when they become citizens and are assimilated and make contributions to our society. How would we judge who was a citizen and who was not? Right now the standard is clear: those born in the U.S. are citizens of the U.S.

Would we have to establish a Court of Immigration to determine who was legal and who was not? Whose father or mother was illegal at the time of conception? Talk about an immigration nightmare!

We do agree with politicians of both parties who call for tightening of borders to minimize illegals, of enforcement of immigration laws -- but so far in the case of Mexico we have not been able to do that sufficiently. But a revision in a constitutional amendment designed to guarantee freedom for all is not a panacea for failure of the federal government to control the borders.

This columnist has corresponded recently with Dr. Eric Foner, emeritus professor of History at Columbia University, about the importance of the work of James G. Birney, a resident of Bay City 1842-1853. One of Birney's main contribution to the heritage of the nation was his anti-slavery writings that are said to have laid the foundation for the Fourteenth Amendment. Regarding the Fourteenth Amendment, Prof. Foner has written:

"The Fourteenth Amendment was the most important constitutional change in the nation's history since the Bill of Rights. Its heart was the first section, which declared all persons born or naturalized in the United States (except Indians) to be both national and state citizens, and which prohibited the states from abridging their "privileges and immunities," depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or denying them "equal protection of the laws."

"In clothing with constitutional authority the principle of equality before the law regardless of race, enforced by the national government, this amendment permanently transformed the definition of American citizenship as well as relations between the federal government and the states, and between individual Americans and the nation. We live today in a legal and constitutional system shaped by the Fourteenth Amendment."

We in Michigan should feel especially keen about any assault on the Fourteenth Amendment since it was here that the movement that led to the Republican Party and the concept of freedom for all men took root.

Let's not open the door for a reintroduction of the idea that some according to their color or national heritage can be denied citizenship. That is fascism, and we have lived through that until the last days of the Civil Rights movement.

Remember, the last states to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment were not so long ago -- Kentucky in 1976 and Ohio and New Jersey in 2003. This has not been a hastily or transitorily crafted protection. Even at that, there are some --apparently Sen. Graham -- who would return us to those black and mindless times.

We can make the case that because of Birney's residence here for 11 years, Bay City was the wellspring of the Liberty Party which led to the Free Soil Party and the Republican Party.

Before you judge immigrants, and their offspring, too harshly, recall the background of the Fourteenth Amendment and the reasons for it.

It is not a provision that can or should be cast aside lightly. The politics of the moment should not overwhelm the monumental work of generations of political thinkers like Birney who built the foundation of freedom on which we all have built our lives.

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