The 14th Amendment isn't a blank check
By: Joseph Causo
Your Turn
Guest columnist
..... The position of New Jersey Representative Analilia Mejia, the 11th District Democrat, as co-chair of a new "task force to defend he 14th Amendment" has little to do with defending the Amendment or interpreting its real meaning in its historical context. The recent unveiling of the task force, which is made up entirely of Democrats, is a vehicle for newly elected Mejia and her fellow liberal Democrats to continue their efforts to dismantle the foundation of America's greatness: the U.S. Constitution.
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Mejia's task force is a vehicle to reward the millions of people who broke our nation's immigration laws during the irresponsible Biden administration by bestowing on their descendants the honor of being American citizens. Mejia believes that the happenstance of birthplace - the occupation of a sliver of American soil at the time of their birth - entitles children born to non-citizens a status indistinguishable form legal immigrants who earned heir citizenship by contributing to the greatness of America, not taking form it.
..... Mejia - who replaced Mikie Sherrill in Congress in March [2026] and her far-left colleagues are trying to erase the difference between true citizenship as envisioned by our nation's founder and those claiming American citizenship for purely financial or pol ital reason. It is impossible to imagine the Reconstruction Congress envisioned birthright citizenship to be applicable to a person born to a foreign national who visits America on a pregnancy tour.
..... Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, in a brilliant rebuttal to the court's 6-3 majority in the Trump v. Barbara birthright citizenship decision, supplied the proper context of the 14th Amendment. The post-Civil War Congress did not pass the amendment to reward illegal immigration or birthright vacationers from China. No, they cerated a constitutional means to undo the wrongs of slavery and to bestow upon those newly freed slaves, such as Dred Scott, who has "a domicile" here - the honor of citizenship.
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The amendment was enacted for men such as Frederick Douglass, who demanded citizenship "not as aliens honor as exiles" but as :Americans" - not to reward the offspring of people who cross into America illegally with little or not intention of becoming American. Thomas said that by using an "alternative history" of the 14th Amendment, the Supreme Court majority has "devalued" citizenship - which is precisely what Mejia is doing.
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Mejia refuses to draw the distinction between enslaved people living and working on American soil for decades and the children of any foreign citizen who finds her way into the country long enough to give birth. Mejia's potion is a slap in the face of the formerly enslaved and their African American ancestors living in America today.
..... Enslaved Americans were freed in the crucible of the Civil War. soldiers died to end the slavery, not to throw open the doors to citizenship to people sneaking into the country, demanding the benefits of America's bounty for which they have contributed nothing. Mejia is blind to the difference.
..... She ignores historic precedent, preferring as many liberal Demo certs do, to make illegal immigration a civil rights crusade without consideration of the financial cultural, national security and social costs of cheapening U.S. citizenship. New Jersey taxpayers foot the bill for Mejia's pandering to illegal immigrants: they pay for the benefits, services and legal defense extended to people with no legal right to be here.
..... Each year millions of dollars are taken from the citizens of this state to support illegal aliens; among those citizens are the descendants of the very enslaved Americans whom the 14th Amendment was meant to protect. Mejia has no passion of the hardworking Black citizens or legal immigrants from Asia, Europe and South America who are struggling to advance their families in the face of the escalating tax burden imposed on them by Democratic policies and programs.
..... Mejia justifies her historically erroneous position by championing illegal immigration as the offspring of the Civil rights Movement. But that movement fought to win American citizens the right their own government was denying them - it did not fight to erase the line between citizen and non-citizen. Collapsing that distinction doesn't honor the 14th amendment: it hollows it out, and it disrespects everyone who actually earned its protections.
..... New Jersey's 11th district deserves a representative who defends the Constitution as written, not one who uses it as cover to overrun this county with millions of people who has no legal claim to be hear, on the backs of the American taxpayers.
..... Joseph Caruso of Wayne is the chairman of American Rising, a North Jersey-based political action committee that supports leaders, candidates and causes that put American citizens and their political and economic liberty above all.