Mike Huckabee wants to overturn the 14th Amendment, the Washington Times reports.
Mike Huckabee wants to amend the Constitution to prevent children born in the U.S. to illegal aliens from automatically becoming American citizens, according to his top immigration surrogate — a radical step no other major presidential candidate has embraced.
Mr. Huckabee, who won last week’s Republican Iowa caucuses, promised Minuteman Project founder James Gilchrist that he would force a test case to the Supreme Court to challenge birthright citizenship, and would push Congress to pass a 28th Amendment to the Constitution to remove any doubt.
That Huckabee has the vigilante Gilchrist serving as an advisor, let alone a spokesman, is rather troubling.
In principle, though, I’m not opposed to this from a public policy standpoint. There’s no good reason to grant automatic citizenship to children born to illegal aliens. “Birthright citizenship” was instituted to grant full legal rights to the freed slaves, not reward law breaking. As a practical matter, though, such an amendment would have no chance of achieving the two-thirds support in both Houses of Congress and majorities in three-quarters of the state legislatures required.
As Mark Levin observes,
if anyone is counting, this makes four constitutional amendments Huckabee claims to be supporting:
1. the Fair Tax requires a constitutional amendment to eliminate the Sixteenth Amendment;
2. a Human Life amendment;
3. an amendment to define marriage;
and now,
4. an amendment to end birthright citizenship.
That would certainly be a record pace.
Story via Memeorandum. Photo via AP/Boston Globe
UPDATE: Huckabee is flatly denying this report. PoliPundit has the text of the statement:
I do not support an amendment to the constitution that would prevent children born in the U.S. to illegal aliens from automatically becoming American citizens. I have no intention of supporting a constitutional amendment to deny birthright citizenship.
One wonders what Gilchrist’s motivation was in making the announcement to the Times. Was he intentionally sabotaging Huckabee with anti-immigration voters? Trying to back him into a corner? Or did Huckabee give him a different impression in private?
