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00:00Let's bring in Mark Smith, a constitutional attorney and a member of the Supreme Court Bar.
00:06Are you making any predictions, Mark, about how the Supreme Court will see this case and rule on it?
00:14I think there's an excellent chance this is going to be the biggest victory of Donald Trump's career as a
00:19politician, frankly,
00:20to actually fix a constitutional wrong that has been a wrong for over 100 years,
00:25largely because no one has had standing to sue over it until Donald Trump's brilliant move to enact this executive
00:31order,
00:31which finally, finally gave rise to the opportunity to get this issue before the U.S. Supreme Court.
00:37Up until that time, people did not have standing to sue because the only people that sort of got directly
00:42impacted by this,
00:44if you're born in America, you're automatically an American citizen, they were beneficiaries.
00:47So they obviously were not going to sue over this.
00:49And now because of Donald Trump, we're in front of the Supreme Court.
00:52And hopefully we're going to get a good outcome in favor of the Constitution.
00:56Tom Dupree was on Fox News Sunday earlier today.
01:00He had this to say about how he sees the case.
01:03Listen.
01:04Birthright citizenship, like it or not, is enshrined in the Constitution.
01:08So I do think that the administration is going to have a bit of an uphill battle.
01:12But I will say this, having read the briefs, looked at what the administration is arguing,
01:16they have presented a much stronger, more compelling argument against birthright citizenship than I had thought coming into this.
01:24I don't know that it's going to be enough to get five votes in their favor, but they've made it
01:28a close case.
01:29Wasn't birthright citizenship originally supposed to help those who were slaves or children of slaves be recognized as U.S.
01:39citizens?
01:41That's right, John.
01:42The reality is that after the Civil War, the United States adopted the 14th Amendment.
01:47In the 14th Amendment's text, literally in the text, John, there's two components that have to be satisfied for you
01:53to be a citizen.
01:54The first is, yes, you have to be born in the United States, physically born in the United States.
01:58That's step one.
01:58But that's not the only step.
02:00You also have to be what's known as subject to the jurisdiction thereof.
02:05That is the text of the 14th Amendment that the left in America likes to pretend is nothing more than
02:10an inkblot.
02:11But the reality is that subject to the jurisdiction thereof, John, is very important because what it says is you
02:15have to be born in the United States
02:17and you have to be loyal to the United States, which means you're not loyal to a foreign power.
02:22Now, if you're the child of illegal aliens or if your parents bring you here on a holiday and you're
02:28born here while your parents intend to go back to China, let's say,
02:30you're not loyal to the United States as understood by the law, you're beholden to another foreign country.
02:36And that is going all the way back, which, by the way, is why Native Americans were not citizens under
02:42the 14th Amendment.
02:43It required a change in the statutory law in the 20th century, John, to make Native Americans lawful U.S.
02:50citizens
02:50because although they were in the United States at the time of the 1868 14th Amendment,
02:55they were not loyal to the United States because they were loyal to their respective tribes.
03:00Jonathan Turley is a Fox News contributor, also George Washington University law professor.
03:05Here's how he sees the argument.
03:08When the 14th Amendment was drafted, some of the drafters said explicitly that it does not allow for birthright citizenship.
03:17The problem are these six words, this clause, put in the middle of an otherwise clear sentence.
03:22But the key is that those words were not in that sentence in the original draft.
03:26They were intentionally inserted.
03:28So you can't just treat them as superfluous.
03:31They were inserted for a reason.
03:33And I think that there are compelling arguments on both sides here.
03:37So he seems to say that the drafters of the 14th Amendment made it pretty clear.
03:45Well, I think it's even clearer that in favor of Donald Trump, because in 1866, John, there was something called
03:51the Civil Rights Act passed by Congress.
03:53In it, it says to be a U.S. citizen, you have to be born in the United States and
03:57you cannot be beholden to a foreign power.
04:00After that law was passed, Congress realized that another Congress could come down the pike and change the law, basically
04:06making African-American, former African-American slaves no longer citizens.
04:10So to make sure that did not happen, they decided to take that Civil Rights Act of 1866 and enshrine
04:16it in the Constitution.
04:17And that is what the 14th Amendment became, which is why the phrase subject to the jurisdiction thereof is essentially
04:24embraced or comes out of that Civil Rights Act of 1866 that literally says you cannot be subject to a
04:30foreign power.
04:31It all turns on, are you and your parents loyal to the United States?
04:35And if you're just passing through on the way to Hawaii for fun or you're broken to the country illegally,
04:41that does not make you loyal to the United States.
04:43And therefore, you're not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.
04:47And thus, you're not a citizen under the text of the 14th Amendment.
04:50And I think that's what the Supreme Court is going to say.
04:51And the only reason, John, that we haven't said it before is because there's never been an opportunity to get
04:56in front of the courts because no one had standing to raise these kinds of arguments until now.
05:00Jonathan Turley says that virtually no nation in Europe allows birthright citizenship.
05:05Are you aware of any country in the world that does, aside from ours?
05:10No, of course not.
05:12Look, the most valuable asset on the planet, period, is becoming a United States citizen.
05:18You'll get to be a citizen of the greatest country that has ever existed in mankind's history, right?
05:24That's the reality of it.
05:25So to think that you would hand these out just because you happen to be born here because your parents
05:30broke into the country is simply absurd.
05:32You know, U.S. citizenship is a lot more than just taking free candy at the doctor's office.
05:36It requires a lot more than that.
05:38Specifically, it requires loyalty to the country.
05:40This is your home.
05:41And it can't just be that your parents are passing through illegally or otherwise.
05:45And you happen to get born here.
05:47That is simply not enough to give you U.S. citizenship.
05:49And the text of the 14th Amendment sort of proves that out, as does the history.
05:54We'll see what the Supreme Court decides.
05:56It's going to be a fascinating week and a fascinating term.
05:59Mark Smith, thank you.
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