Where does this idea of birthright citizenship come from?

  • It didn’t come from the Fourteenth Amendment. In the Supreme Court decision Elk v. Wilkins in 1884 (112 US 94):

“The persons declared to be citizens are `all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’ The evident meaning of these last words is, not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction, and owing them direct and immediate allegiance.”

  • How can a newborn child owe “direct and immediate allegiance” to any political body? After all, John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government said that parental rights are all based upon “divine revealed law” in the Bible, and that children when they are 21 years old would choose which government to place themselves under.*
  • The 1941 US Supreme Court decision Edwards v. California, 314 US 160 ,stated at page 183:

… birth within a state does not establish citizenship thereof.”

Feudal Law

Citizenship by birth on the soil (jus soli) has never been true in America.  This type of citizenship excludes “the children of foreigners, happening to be born to them while passing through the country” (as was the minority opinion in the Supreme Court’s Wong Kim Ark decision).  Jus soli was created by feudal law. (see Amos S. Hershey, Essentials of International Law, MacMillian Publishing, 1912, at 237).

All serfs born on the soil are property of the landlord.

But what about federal citizenship?

The 14th Amendment’s phrase “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” uses the definite article “the” jurisdiction.  It does not refer to the several state’s plural (“their”) jurisdiction.

A State Citizen cannot possibly be “completely subject to [federal] political jurisdiction, and owing them direct and immediate allegiance.”.  After all, under our Constitution, Vice President Thomas Jefferson reassured the people of Kentucky in 1798 that they were free from all federal laws, except for the three crimes mentioned in the Constitution, “and no other crimes whatever”. He went on to say “(and all other their acts which assume to create, define, or punish crimes other than those enumerated in the Constitution) are altogether void and of no force, and that the power to create, define, and punish such other crimes is reserved, and of right appertains solely and exclusively to the respective States, each within its own Territory.”

  • And in Kitchens v. Steele 112 F.Supp 383 the court determined that “A citizen of the United States is a citizen of the federal government…” — as if one has to volunteer into citizenship by claiming to be one.
  • The U.S. Supreme Court in US v. Cruikshank, 92 US 542 at page 551 said:

“The citizen cannot complain, because he has voluntarily submitted himself to such a form of government.”

So how does being born voluntarily* submit yourself to government?

  • In both the Old Testament and New Testament, we find that God hated Esau.  Esau, with an oath, traded his birthright for a bowl of stew. Did you do the same?  For more information read my book Oaths: Mandatory or Voluntary? And for the sad story of how you waived your rights in exchange for benefits, read my book The Citizen Cannot Complain.

If you don’t know how to defend your rights, you will lose them. I recommend that you study all the basic law procedures  explained in  “How To Win In Court” self-help course.

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* John Locke’s Second Treatise of government, which was the foundation for most of the Declaration of Independence, in his Chapter 6 “Paternal rights”, says that a child is not subject to legislated laws until he is old enough to make binding contracts.  He said in paragraph 57: “for nobody can be under a law, which is not promulgated to him” and later in paragraph 73 when children become 21 years old they can choose which government to place themselves under, and, according to paragraph 62, this cannot happen until they have the recognized right to take binding oaths of allegiance.

 

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