**Previously recorded by Phyllis Schlafly // October 2015**
Pew Research Center estimated that 340,000 children are born annually to citizens of Mexico and other foreign countries who are living illegally in the United States, and that doesn’t include children born to “birth tourists,” who are primarily from Asian countries, which the Center for Immigration Studies estimates could be as high as 360,000. These children are called “anchor babies” because their presumed U.S. citizenship enables their parents to access a variety of benefit programs intended for U.S. citizens, and makes it so much easier for the entire family to continue living here illegally.
What that forgotten phrase means is that when someone born here is “subject to the jurisdiction” of another nation, that child does not automatically become a U.S. citizen.
Liberals claim that our Constitution guarantees automatic U.S. citizenship to all children born on American soil, and it’s true that the Fourteenth Amendment begins with the words “All persons born or naturalized in the United States … are citizens of the United States.” But in between those two phrases is a very important qualification that is often left out of the quote: “AND subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
What that forgotten phrase means is that when someone born here is “subject to the jurisdiction” of another nation, that child does not automatically become a U.S. citizen. By filing a legal brief in a Texas lawsuit last month and submitting sworn testimony, Mexico officially admitted that children born to its citizens living illegally in the United States remain “subject to the jurisdiction” of Mexico.
The Mexican consul, in his sworn testimony, says that “My responsibilities include protecting the rights and promoting the interests of my fellow Mexican nationals” living abroad. Mexico’s assertion of continuing jurisdiction over its “nationals abroad” is inconsistent with anybody’s claim that automatic U.S. citizenship is granted to babies merely because they were born on U.S. soil.
