Bashful U.S. Sen. Tim Sheehy, R-Montana, expects the Montana media to be guilty of “misrepresenting” his position on birthright citizenship and “gaslighting their readers, as they usually do.”
It would be hard to misrepresent his position, since nothing in his Feb. 15 opinion piece in the Billings Gazette explains exactly what his position is. He cites abuses in the current immigration system and calls on the U.S. Supreme Court to “target” commercial exploitation of the system through “industrialized surrogacy.”
Well, OK. But he doesn’t ask Congress, in which he serves, to do anything.
He does say that the “years-long debate over birthright citizenship is riddled with nuance,” which is true. He does not mention that he is one of a dozen Republican senators who have signed onto a legal brief calling on the Supreme Court to end birthright citizenship as it has been widely understood since the passage of the 14th Amendment.
Our other U.S. senator, Steve Daines, R-Montana, did not sign on but did give this meaningless statement to the Montana Free Press: “Sen. Daines supports the administration’s immigration policies to secure the border and enforce the rule of law and looks forward to this case being before the Supreme Court.”
The 14th Amendment is the one that says, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” The nuance is in the meaning of “jurisdiction.”
For well over a century, jurisdiction meant you are subject to the laws of the United States and of the state in which you live. The brief Sheehy signed onto said the word “requires more than mere physical presence. It demands total allegiance to the sovereign. To hold otherwise places sovereignty, citizenship, and our nation’s survival in jeopardy.” Since parents who come here illegally are still citizens of their native country, neither they nor their children born here owe “total allegiance” to the United States, the argument goes.
I have a hard time providing total allegiance to anything, even the Houston Astros. More to the point, the earlier definition provides an elegant answer to the question of who is a citizen. Got a U.S. birth certificate? You’re in.
Take that away, and things quickly get complicated. For example, the SAVE Act recently passed by the House, but not yet by the Senate, would require you to show a birth certificate, passport or other documentation in order to vote.
But you have to make sure you get the long-form, formal birth certificate. Montana will send you one for $16 if you can prove that you are who you are. The shorter form typically provided in many states may not tell where your parents were born. Even if it does, it won’t tell you where your grandparents were born, and if they came here illegally, then maybe your parents were never citizens either.
I’ve noted here already that women who adopt the surname of their husbands may have trouble proving their birth name. And David Frum reports that 93 million Americans are either immigrants or the children of immigrants. Proving their parents were here legally could be daunting.
None of this would matter if America were not such a nice place to live. Immigration would take care of itself. Sheehy could better spend his time keeping America nice than fighting off immigrants.
He could start by spending less time keeping noncitizens from voting – something that rarely happens — and more time making sure that citizens can vote. He could speak out, for example, against the federal confiscation of 2020 ballots in Fulton County, Georgia. Multiple news outlets have reported that the affidavit justifying the confiscation relied heavily on discredited theories of election fraud. Now that the ballots are in the hands of longtime election deniers, those theories can never be credible.
Sheehy also could work to protect the free speech rights of members of Congress, retired soldiers, talk show hosts and college professors. And he could denounce the president’s threats to nationalize elections and take control of voting in at least 15 states.
Those would be the actions of a good conservative. If conservatives don’t start acting conservative quickly, no one will remember what conservatism was.
