I don’t know how united the House Republicans are in their dislike of Latinos, so it’s hard to say whether or not the soon-to-be chairman of the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law will be able to pass a law banning birthright citizenship. There are a couple of obvious obstacles standing in Rep. Steve King’s (R-IA) way. The first is that such a statute would be plainly unconstitutional. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution is unequivocal:

“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.”

That clause became necessary to assure that the newly-emancipated slaves would be granted full citizenship rights. In other words, birthright citizenship was established as a constitutional principle to protect non-whites from discrimination of the kind currently being pursued by Rep. King. King’s first problem, therefore, is that he has to convince a majority of the House to vote for something that is both racist and unconstitutional.

His second hurdle is getting people to vote for a plainly racist and unconstitutional law that will only serve to further alienate the growing Latino population from the Republican Party. There are a lot of Republicans who can read demographic trends in their districts and states, and who are not going to be eager to join in an effort to piss off Latinos. But King is going to try anyway.

Just after the election, he was publicly saying he had the votes in the new House to strip citizenship from babies born on U.S. soil to undocumented immigrants — a frontal assault on the 14th Amendment to the Constitution which King thinks is being wrongly interpreted….

…“The framers did not consider the babies of illegals when they framed the 14th amendment because we didn’t have immigration law at the time so they could not have wanted to confer automatic citizenship on the babies of people who were unlawfully in the United States,” King said.

King wants Congress to pass a ban on “anchor babies,” place it in statute, and wait for the other side to challenge the prohibition in the courts. If King and his forces lose, they’ll move for a constitutional amendment to change the practice, he said.

“It’s the right policy, and I think we can do it by statute,” King said.

I wonder why King thinks “the Framers” crafted the 14th Amendment. It was adopted in 1868. In any case, even if King were to move such a bill through the House, it would die there. Harry Reid would not bring the bill up, and if for some reason he did, the Democrats would filibuster it. Obviously, the president would veto King’s bill if it magically found its way to his desk.

So, King is lying through his teeth when he promises people that he can pass this racist and unconstitutional law, but that’s about par for the course with this generation of Republicans. Nonetheless, I welcome King’s efforts. Let’s put our cards on the table. You don’t like Latinos, and we do. That’s the beginning of honesty.