“To hold that the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution excludes from
citizenship the children, born in the United States, of citizens or
subjects of other countries would be to deny citizenship to thousands of
persons of English, Scotch, Irish, German, or other European parentage
who have always been considered and treated as citizens of the United
States… Whatever considerations, in the absence of a controlling
provision of the Constitution, might influence the legislative or the
executive branch of the Government to decline to admit persons of the
Chinese race to the status of citizens of the United States, there are
none that can constrain or permit the judiciary to refuse to give full
effect to the peremptory and explicit language of the Fourteenth
Amendment, which declares and ordains that ‘All persons born or
naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction
thereof, are citizens of the United States.'”
Last updated on:
1/30/2017 |
Author: ProCon.org