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Friday, December 10, 2010

Amendment 14

Section 1. 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. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.


Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.



Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.



Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.



Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.


This amendment makes everyone that is born in the United States a citizen, and grants them all of the rights and priveledges that come with citizenship.



This video is part of a recent controversy of the 14th amendment in that it allows for "anchor babies" or "birth right citizenship", where a child of 2 illegal aliens is automatically a citizen when they are born in the U.S. The man in the video is reminding people the original reason for this amendment, which was to make the freed slaves citizens. He says before you try to repeal it you should consider how else people would become citizens, and consider whether or not the government could use that power to deny a group of people rights, like it did after the slaves were freed. 




This video is also talking about the recent talk in the GOP of repealing the 14th amendment. It has been construed to be allowing illegal aliens a path to citizenship just by having a baby in the US. Proponents of this argument forget about the history behind this amendment or why it is there in the first place, and offer no alternative to replace the way in which we become citizens. If you are not automatically a citizen when you are born, then there would be reason to believe the government can systematically reject citizenship to a certain group of people and deny those people rights, like what has happened in the past.

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