{"id":5074,"date":"2015-09-15T19:32:56","date_gmt":"2015-09-15T23:32:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/?p=5074"},"modified":"2015-09-15T19:41:35","modified_gmt":"2015-09-15T23:41:35","slug":"constitution-day-who-are-citizens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/2015\/09\/constitution-day-who-are-citizens\/","title":{"rendered":"Constitution Day: Who Are Citizens?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"constitution-3a6e5d963ceee4f7cd7ef448cb32e5ee8e86f7e0-s6-c30\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Congress, in its great wisdom, established a law a number of years ago that requires colleges and universities to observe “Constitution Day”<\/a> each year on September 17.\u00a0 Why September 17?\u00a0 Because the Constitution of the United States was first signed on September 17, 1789\u00a0by a group of 40 men collectively known as the Founding Fathers.\u00a0 A lot has happened in the 226 years since Gouverneur Morris <\/a>wrote the words, “We, the People of the United States…” confirming the revolution that started 13 years previously.\u00a0 Over the years, the Constitution has changed with the addition of the Bill of Rights and other amendments, 27 in all, that have ensured that our most fundamental governing law is not brittle, that it grows with new awareness of the human condition in each historical moment.<\/p>\n

Perhaps no part of the Constitution is more important or controversial than the 14th Amendment <\/a>which guarantees citizenship to “All persons born or naturalized in the United States…”\u00a0 This Amendment was part of the three “Reconstruction Amendments” enacted after the Civil War to ensure full citizenship for African Americans.\u00a0 Section 1 of the 14th Amendment specifically repudiates the dreadful 1857\u00a0Dred Scott <\/a>decision of the Supreme Court that held that African Americans could not be citizens.\u00a0 The 14th Amendment remediated the shameful decision in the Dred Scott <\/a>case and accorded citizenship to the former slaves, African Americans and all people born in the United States.\u00a0 The 14th Amendment is also the guarantor of “equal protection of the laws,” perhaps the most frequently cited principle to defeat discrimination and injustice.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to 2015.\u00a0 Immigration<\/a> has been a flashpoint in U.S. society for many years, exposing a cruel undercurrent of hatred and bias against people whose languages and cultures are different from the mainstream community.\u00a0 Undocumented immigrants\u00a0are the topic of scandalously inflammatory speeches <\/a>in the current presidential campaign,\u00a0with some candidates whipping audiences into a\u00a0frenzy of hatred.\u00a0 “Illegals”\u00a0has become one of the\u00a0most shameful labels in populist rhetoric,\u00a0akin to other contemptible labels about race and ethnicity.\u00a0 While nearly all Americans (except Native Americans) can trace ancestry to people who immigrated to this country, the bitter tone and ugly prejudice of so much of the current anti-immigration discourse <\/a>is\u00a0squarely directed against\u00a0Mexicans and Latinos.\u00a0 Too many of today’s anti-immigrant agitators seem to forget their own ancestral struggles,\u00a0that the Irish were reviled in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, that Italians were spat upon and called ugly names, that Poles and Slavs and Turks suffered much discrimination — so much so that most of the first generations of white European ethnics lived in closed communities with each other; for example, the parish structures of the Catholic Church in eastern cities\u00a0were as much about protecting the ethnic communities as they were about faith.<\/p>\n

But each immigrant group had a dream — The American Dream — and these dreamers from all around the globe made their perilous voyages and journeys to the United States with one driving hope sustaining them:\u00a0 that their children would have better lives.\u00a0 This IS the American Dream, and the American Way.<\/p>\n

Sadly, in 2015, children — infants, really — are the new flashpoint for hatred.\u00a0 Some politicians and pundits now want to take the right of citizenship away from babies born in this country.\u00a0 They want to change the 14th Amendment to strip “anchor babies”<\/a> of their rights — the disparaging term used against children born to undocumented mothers.<\/p>\n

What do you think about these proposals to change the 14th Amendment?\u00a0 Should the children of undocumented mothers also be considered undocumented and, hence, liable for deportation or other penalties?\u00a0 Just who are “We, the People” in 2015?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I invite members of the Trinity community to offer your comments on this topic and other thoughts on the immigraiton controversy.\u00a0 Pope Francis will be in town next week and he surely will have some comments as well!\u00a0 I will post your comments on this blog with or without your name as you may wish.\u00a0 Please send your comments to president@trinitydc.edu <\/a>and tell me your name, whether you wish to be anonymous, class year, major, or if you are faculty or staff.\u00a0 Please make sure your comments are written well, and try to keep to just a few paragraphs at most.<\/em><\/p>\n

You can also offer comments by writing in the comment box below.<\/p>\n

Thank you!\u00a0 Happy Constitution Day!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Constitution Day Essay Question: Should we amend the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment? Discuss!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[971,786,688,509,14,972,787,20,23,24],"tags":[33,1547,1548,109,127],"class_list":["post-5074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academics","category-business-issues","category-catholic-issues","category-civil-human-rights","category-education","category-education-reform-2","category-political-issues","category-politics","category-social-issues","category-social-justice-issues","tag-14th-amendment","tag-anchor-babies","tag-birthright-citizenship","tag-citizenship","tag-constitution-day"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5074\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}