What is happening today with immigration is sickening. There is no respect for the enforcement of the rule of law.

I am the son of a LEGAL immagrant and I say I am AMERICAN not hyphen-American, just AMERICAN.

The needs of the few do not and should not outway the needs of the many.

GOD BLESS OUR GREAT COUNTRY!!!!

The 1866 Civil Rights Act was enacted two months earlier by the same 39th Congress that sponsored the 14th Amendment (with the Citizenship Clause in section 1), and the Act provided a similar clause:

“All persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States.”

Note the missing comma before the coordinating conjunction “and” in the phrase “and not subject to any foreign power.”

What was the GRAMMATICAL reason for omitting the comma in the Act and placing the pair of commas in the Citizenship Clause by the same 39th Congress?

Note that the original draft of the Citizenship Clause by the author reads:

“All persons born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

The words “or naturalized” was inserted (without debate) a week later (08 June 1866), after the author’s original Draft was debated and approved 30 May 1866.