Talk radio host Rush Limbaugh argued that “The 14th Amendment says nothing about birthright citizenship” on Thursday.
Rush said, “The 14th Amendment says nothing about birthright citizenship. It just doesn’t. As I say, Brother Levin made the point exquisitely last night. They want the Constitution to say that. They want people to believe the Constitution says that if you are born to an illegal alien mother, that you are automatically an American citizen. They want to insist that that’s what the Constitution says, but it doesn’t. And again a reminder, the Supreme Court has never ruled that the children of illegal aliens are American citizens. The Supreme Court has only granted citizenship to the children born to legal immigrants, not illegal. Who in their right mind ever thought that the birth of a child to an illegal immigrant converted to citizenship? A lot of people believe it. It’s not in the 14th Amendment. You know where it is? It’s in Article I, Section 8, Clause 4. Here’s what it says: ‘The Congress shall have power…to establish an uniform rule of naturalization.’ You know what that means. That means Congress decides who becomes a citizen and how. To automatically say the 14th Amendment grants birthright citizenship… no, we can’t change that. Amending the Constitution, that not possible, takes too long. We gotta find another way of dealing with this. No, we don’t, because it’s not there. You don’t have to amend the Constitution.”
He continued, “Now, the 14 Amendment excludes Indians, i.e., Native Americans as US citizens because it was felt they had allegiance to their own national tribes, and so forth, but there’s nothing in it, and yet it’s a matter of debate? The interesting thing is, how it got started, and how long ago, and how deeply believed and embedded in our society it is. I mean, I can imagine that many of you hearing me say this think I have to be wrong. Maybe, you know, I’m well-intentioned and you know I’m not lying to you, but maybe I’m wrong because everybody knows that if you’re born in America, you are a citizen. No, you’re not. Now, clearly the invaders think so. It’s one of the reasons they’re coming. They come pregnant, they give birth, they think automatically there is citizenship involved. So that’s one thing to straighten out. And as I say, the truth here happens to be perceived by a lot of people as the extreme position, when all it is is a literal interpretation of the Constitution, which to a lot of people, the Second Amendment is an extreme position.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett