Posted by
B.N. Sharpe on Wednesday, August 22, 2007 12:30:22 AM
I'm not sure at what point in American history the fourteenth amendment was first grammatically misinterpreted and therefore constitutionally and legally misinterpreted, as it continues to be to this day, raising this whole stupid "anchor baby" issue. The fourteenth amendment was not penned, proposed and proclaimed between 1866 and 1868 to cover all persons born within this country's borders through all time. The fourteenth amendment was written for the purpose of declaring that the freed slaves of America were citizens of the nation and of the state in which they resided and that they would be afforded equal protection under the law.
Section 1 of Amendment 14, which is the only section of the three with which we're concerned relative to this issue, consists of two sentences. The first sentence, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside", is composed of a clause and a phrase that are written in past and present tenses relative to the 1860's, following the War Between the States. The verbs "born" and "naturalized" are written in past tense, referring to those persons who were already born or naturalized here in 1866. The phrase "...and subject to..." and the verb "are" are present tense constructs acting as a present participle phrase and bestowing a present (i.e. 1860's) state of being, that state being national and state citizenship, upon persons live birthed or naturalized at the time of the amendment's writing 140 years ago. It was not written to apply to any baby birthed (especially not to any baby birthed at the taxpayers' expense) on our doorstep by some foreign national who has illegally invaded our country for the sole purpose of birthing that baby in America, so as to take advantage of mentally disordered liberal interpretations of our Constitution 140 years later.
It is only the second sentence in Section 1 that addresses issues in the future tense with the future tense verb "shall".