The Fourteenth Amendment

One very controversial issue which is currently at hand is the repeal of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees citizenship to anyone born in the United States. The reasoning behind this idea of repealing the Fourteenth Amendment is that it would discourage immigrants to come to this country in hopes of giving birth to a child who would then be a United States born citizen. This discouraging factor would then have an overall affect on the number of immigrates and it would reduce the number of illegal immigrants who are currently flooding into the United States. However a report published by the Migration Policy Institute on September 8, 2010 provided information that made a case contrary to the beliefs of those fighting for the repeal. It was concluded by this institution that the repeal of the Fourteenth Amendment would cause big increases in the population of illegal immigrants. The report estimated that the population of immigrants could grow to 14 million by 2020 and by 2050 the population of illegal immigrants could even 24 million. This growth would occur if citizenship were denied to children born in the United States who have at least one parent who is an illegal immigrant. The group which published these reports was a nonpartisan research group which leaves no reason for suspicion that these numbers were in any way manipulated.

I believe this repeal is entirely unnecessary as its sole purpose is to fix the “problem” of immigration which is my mind is far from a problem. The repeal of the Fourteenth Amendment seems like it would also cause more problems that it would fix. If people born in the United States were not immediately guaranteed citizenship, it would cause problems for everyone, not just immigrants coming from Mexico or any other country. So in my opinion changing an important aspect of the constitution is not the solution to the “problem” of immigration which the United States continues to have.