A News 8 Special Report “Born in the U.S.A.”, featured an interview with Professor Bryan Wildenthal, aired Friday night June 8th on the 11 p.m. news:

                                    Bryan Wildenthal

Transcript of story:

14th Amendment Guarantees Citizenship
President Bush's controversial immigration bill is dead for now. Among its provisions, it would have helped many undocumented become citizens, something the 14th Amendment guarantees to everyone born in the USA.

A healthy baby girl born in a La Mesa hospital -- like all babies born in the United States, she became a citizen at birth. Her mother was so determined to have that legacy for her firstborn, she risked having her baby on a dusty patch of dirt inches from the U.S.-Mexico border in the East County.

In the final stages of labor, the 16-year-old screamed in pain. After hours of heated debate between pro- and anti-immigration groups, paramedics took over. The mother-to-be was rushed to the hospital where she gave birth, and returned to Mexico several days later.

"Immigrants are all under the jurisdiction of the U.S., regardless, of legal statues, whether it's a legal immigrant or an illegal immigrant," law professor Bryan Wildenthal said.

The constitutional expert at Thomas Jefferson School of Law explains what that means.

"Meaning an infant born to a woman however briefly within the United States, is under the 14th Amendment a citizen of the United States," he said.

The 14th Amendment to the constitution grants citizenship to everyone born in the United States,
assured the privileges guaranteed by the Constitution. To understand how the 14th Amendment became the law of the land, you have to go back to the Civil War.

A year into the war between the states, President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, abolishing slavery. When the war ended, more than 4 million slaves were freed. The government acted to protect the former slaves.

"The framers of the 14th Amendment did not want the United States to have a sub-class of people who were not citizens," Wildenthal said.

That's because the U.S. Constitution guarantees citizens life, liberty, prosperity and due process of law -- rights that would be denied to non-citizens. So Congress drafted three amendments, called the Reconstruction Amendments.

The 13th Amendment abolished slavery, the 14th Amendment gave citizenship to every person born in America, and the 15th Amendment gave voting rights to the freed slaves.

There is an exception to the 14th Amendment though. The children born in this country to foreign diplomats are not given citizenship.