0 Understanding Citizenship With Respect to the Fourteenth Amendment

The actual wording of the fourteenth amendment of the Constitution says, "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."

The amendment was passed July 9, 1868, and overruled the Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court in 1857. The intent of the amendment was to include the newly freed slaves and their offspring as citizens of the United States. Until that time, slaves were not even citizens of the states where they lived, and therefore, had no claim on citizenship in the United States.

The amendment also had to due with the newly passed Civil Rights Bill of 1866, which stated in part, "people born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power are entitled to be citizens, without regard to race, color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude". This law had been twice vetoed by President Andrew Johnson. Finally, the veto was overridden by a two-thirds majority in Congress and became law. However, the law was subject to court rulings. Therefore, the fourteenth amendment was proposed as a means of securing the content of the Civil Rights Bill.

The first sentence in the amendment did not produce much controversy. It announced that citizenship would be granted to one born within the boundaries of the United States. It also granted state citizenship concurrently. There was controversy, however, in the second part of the amendment. It guaranteed "due process" and "equal protection" at the state level. During the Civil War, there were contracts signed and debt incurred with states in the south whose federal government no longer existed.

This controversy caused some to think that the amendment would never pass. At issue was that the Bill of Rights limited the power of the Federal government over states, and the words in the fourteenth amendment seemed to tell the states they had to comply with rules set forth by the Federal government

The fourteenth amendment was eventually adopted, and was not believed to add any new limitations to the rights of the states. There is a new controversy, today, over who the fourteenth amendment grants citizenship to. The Civil Rights Bill of 1866 stated that citizenship was granted to those, "not subject to any foreign power". The fourteenth amendment has no such clause.

There are now circumstances that have given rise to questions that need to be worked out is over this issue. Does the fourteenth amendment grant citizenship to those born in the United States to those who are in the United States with no legal status? To a slave in this country in the 1860's, the answer was intended to be, "yes". Was it the same intent to grant the rights to those who are entering this country without legal status, today?