From an opinion piece that originally appeared on TheGrio

Last week, Lindsey Graham (R-SC), announced that he would consider introducing a bill to rescind a provision in the 14th Amendment which generally guarantees U.S. citizenship to those who are born within U.S. borders. Yesterday, Jon Kyl (R-AZ) agreed, saying that he is not interested in “amnesty” for undocumented immigrants, but rather, in “hearings” to consider the repeal of the provision.

The historical context for the “Reconstruction Amendment” they challenge should not get lost here. The 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause was crafted in response to the prevailing legal sentiment in 1868–particularly in southern states–which had specifically challenged the right of African-Americans to be U.S. citizens. The citizenship provision intentionally liberated African-Americans and other people of color from the 1857 Dred Scott decision, which determined that people of African descent, particularly if they had ever been enslaved or descended from anyone who had been enslaved, were not entitled to the privileges of U.S. citizenship. The provision–along with other sections of the Amendment–also protected African-Americans from having to live by the rule of oppressive “black codes” which restricted access to certain areas and which required African-Americans to carry passes (i.e. documentation of their status).

Repealing the citizenship provision of the 14th Amendment would not only serve as a threat to the livelihood of immigrants–documented and undocumented–it should also be received as a threat to the very foundation of our nation’s civil and human rights law. It would dangerously stunt the growth of racial equality by implicitly returning to the doctrine of the Dred Scott decision and the idea that one cannot overcome the status of his or her previous condition–once a slave, always a slave. It would also reinforce the notion that if one is undocumented, he or she–and his/her descendants–may never enjoy the privileges of U.S. citizenship. Is this what we call progress?…

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