Birthright Citizenship

The 14th Amendment of the US Constitution confers US citizenship on any person born in the United States. This amendment, finally adopted as part of the
Constitution in 1868, ensured that former enslaved Africans and their
children were U.S. citizens. Together with the 13th Amendment, which
bans slavery, and the 15th, which prohibits the government from denying
any citizen the right to vote on the basis of race, color or previous
condition of servitude, the 14th Amendment is fundamental to the whole
country's long walk toward human rights and equality under the law.

Now some Republican political leaders and their Tea Party supporters are calling for 14th Amendment to be redacted to exclude the children of illegal immigrants born on US soil.  Ending birthright citizenship, however, would be a disaster for our nation and create a new disenfranchised underclass.  Professor Julie Wise, in an Op/Ed piece in the Los Angeles Times points to Germany as a negative example of what could happen here:

Since the birth of modern Germany, that country has followed the jus sanguinis,
or "right of blood," principle of citizenship, in which any German
descendant could claim German citizenship while the children of
foreigners — even legal immigrants — born in Germany could not. To meet
labor needs while keeping Germany as German as possible, the government
implemented guest-worker programs to bring in foreigners for temporary
stays.

But things did not work out as planned. Some guest workers remained,
and as the economy grew and the workforce aged, immigrants kept coming
— both inside and outside the law. Their German-born noncitizen
children began to form a vast underclass. These children had known only
Germany and German in their young lives but were stuck in a no man's
land as people without a country.

So in 2000, Germany made its citizenship laws just a little more like
ours. Children born on German soil could claim German citizenship, but
only if at least one of their parents had lived in the country legally
for eight years. The children born in Germany of two undocumented
parents still are not German citizens at birth. The result is an
underground market in fraudulent paternity, in which German men who are
citizens — derogatorily known as imbissvaeter, or fast-food fathers — claim to be a child's father in exchange for a fee, thus enabling the child to be a German citizen.

Far from promoting the rule of law, Germany's approach to citizenship
has created a mess. Unless the U.S. implemented mandatory DNA testing,
which many would consider an invasion of privacy, it is likely that a
similar black market in paternity would emerge here if birthright
citizenship were eliminated.

Angela Merkel has called for a new, serious debate on the issue of integration of immigrants in Germany, but in the present toxic environment it is not clear that any reforms are possible.