LULAC Decries State Efforts to Violate the 14th Amendment
January 5, 2011
Contact: Lizette Olmos, (202) 833-6130
Anti-immigrant legislators seek to create permanent underclass of easily exploitable workers with no civil rights or occupational protections in perpetuity
WASHINGTON- The League of United Latin American Citizens, this country’s largest and oldest Hispanic civil rights organization, today denounced efforts by a handful of state legislators to violate the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution with various illegal big government schemes to deny citizenship to all children born in the United States.
“LULAC strongly opposes efforts by some state legislators to violate the 14th amendment and to deny citizenship to children born in the United States,” stated Margaret Moran, LULAC National President. “We are extremely concerned that the illegal state schemes being proposed today will lead to a permanent underclass of easily exploited undocumented workers in our country…something that all Americans should oppose.”
Birthright citizenship is the law of the land, enshrined in the 14th Amendment and upheld by the Supreme Court in several key decisions since. At stake in this debate is whether states should uphold the rule law or violate federal supremacy laws and the 14th Amendment through big government schemes that will harm all the residence in their state. If these legislators were to succeed, every parent would need to prove to skeptical government bureaucrats that their children are entitled to the twisted definitions of U.S. Citizenship that each state could, at their option, contrive to adopt.
Furthermore, eliminating birthright citizenship would not do anything to solve the problem of undocumented immigration to the United States. On the contrary the number of undocumented people living in the US would grow every year in perpetuity and the United States would quickly develop into a caste society with an exploited undocumented working caste without any rights whatsoever and a privileged citizen caste who would control government and make rules to benefit themselves. The founding fathers dream of an egalitarian society would be dead and the United States would begin to resemble the old European feudal system that our system of government was designed to replace.
The League of United Latin American Citizens, the largest and oldest Hispanic membership organization in the country, advances the economic condition, educational attainment, political influence, housing, health and civil rights of Hispanic Americans through community-based programs operating through 880 LULAC councils nationwide.
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