This is Open to Debate.

I'm John Donvan, here with a live audience at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University in Phoenix, where we intend to pursue once again our core mission of good faith argument between people who may disagree fiercely, but who are also willing to meet on a stage such as this one, to engage, to listen, to make their case with facts and logic and critical thinking, where it is the ideas that go up against each other while the debaters demonstrate respect for one another.

The idea at the heart of this debate - it's the concept of birthright citizenship.

At its most simple, this is the idea that a person born in the U.S.

and the practice is thereby recognized as an American citizen, regardless of who that person's parents are, with only a few exceptions.

It derives from an amendment to the Constitution that's been in effect for 157 years, but it is being meaningfully challenged right now.

President Trump signed an executive order on the first day of his second term, intending to deny citizenship to children of families who lack legal status to reside in the U.S.

It is being challenged, this executive order, and it's likely to go to the Supreme Court.

This debate will focus not just on the legal arguments involved, but also we'll look at the actual consequences of a potential end to birthright citizenship as it has long been practiced.

Will the nation be better off or worse off if it comes to that?

Here is the question up for debate.

Should America end birthright citizenship?

We have four compelling voices eager to debate on this topic.

It will be two against two taking on this question in three rounds.

Those rounds are opening arguments, open discussion, and closing arguments.

A reminder to the debaters about some of our ground rules, which I will enforce.

No personal attacks, no endless repetition of the same talking points, and to our audience, we ask that you also maintain civility.

Part of our mission at Open to Debate is to encourage what you're about to see, we hope, healthy debate, even debate on highly contentious issues such as this one.

We do this by ensuring that all of our participants, debaters and audience alike, maintain the highest standard of civility.

Let's get to our opening statements.

Again, our question is, should America end birthright citizenship?

Each debater has four minutes to make his or her case, and first up, answering yes to the question and saying America should end birthright citizenship, I want to welcome Horace Cooper.

Horace is a constitutional scholar, a senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research, and chairman of the Project 21 Advisory Board, a frequent legal commentator who previously taught constitutional law at George Mason University, the author of a book called <i>Put Y'all Back in Chains,</i> and another called “How Trump Is Making Black America Great Again.” We're delighted to have you with us, Horace.

You are arguing for ending birthright citizenship.

The floor is yours.

Please tell us why.

Good afternoon.

It's great to be here with my colleague Mark Krikorian, where we'll be talking about why it's so important that America ends birthright citizenship.

Many of you are all familiar with the Supreme Court precedent that was set in 1898 that many are using today as their pretext for allowing an open-ended opportunity for anybody, for any reason, to come to America and stay for even a brief period of time to become a citizen.

But first, let's start with a little bit of history.

The greatest war, the most consequential war that this country has ever been in, and by consequential, I mean as measured by the number of lives lost, was the Civil War.

And we lost more lives during that war than we had in any war prior to that, and in fact, all the way up to the present.

Immediately at the conclusion of this war, the Congress of the United States passed the very first Civil Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1866.

And its purpose was to make sure that the newly Black freedmen had all the rights of citizenship.

Well, guess what?

The states and the courts, particularly the Supreme Court, failed to give that any promise.

And so, Congress responded with the 14th Amendment, putting in the Constitution itself the protection of these particular rights.

And guess what?

States, courts in those states, and the U.S.

Supreme Court failed to live up to that promise.

In a series of rulings, the Supreme Court undermined fundamental protections.

And even after the Congress of the United States passed the second Civil Rights Act, they passed the Enforcement Act when Black plaintiffs came before the Supreme Court, arguing that the 14th Amendment protected them, whether it was from lynch mobs, whether it was from public accommodations.

The Supreme Court said no.

In a landmark decision that every single law student has to read, <i>Plessy v Ferguson,</i> the Supreme Court said even if the state itself oppresses people, that that action doesn't violate the 14th Amendment.

And guess what?

Justice Harlan dissented, and he said, no, it's not true.

The 14th Amendment protects it.

It was created for Black Americans.

It took nearly 60 years for that understanding to become the law of the land.

Well guess what?

Two years after that terrible ruling in 1896, Wong Kim Ark came forward and the court got it wrong again.

And guess what?

Justice Harlan dissented, and he said that this is not true, that the rights that are being created by this court were the intention of the framers of the 14th Amendment.

He said that the 14th Amendment was intended to ensure that Black Americans got freedoms and protections as citizens, not anyone who could fly on a luxury plane and stay long enough to deliver their child and get a passport and a birth certificate and fly out, or anyone who, simply by geography, could cross over a border and have a child.

In fact, what Justice Harlan's views are are ultimately what I predict we're going to see from the United States Supreme Court.

The 14th Amendment never intended to create this consequential and damaging change.

Thank you.

Thank you, Horace.

And next up, to give opening remarks, I want to welcome Kris Mayes, Arizona Attorney General, who will be arguing that birthright citizenship should not be ended at this point or, I think, ever.

She served in Arizona governor Janet Napolitano's administration and on the Arizona Corporate Commission, and prior to her election as Attorney General, she worked as a professor at ASU School of Sustainability and the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at ASU.

She also earned her degree from ASU's College of Law, where she graduated magna cum laude.

Please welcome the Attorney General of the State of Arizona, Kris Mayes.

Thank you.

Thank you, and thank you for having us here.

I really appreciate this, this wonderful gathering and the chance to be with you all.

Let me start with this.

Birthright citizenship is not a policy choice.

It is written into the American Constitution.

The 14th Amendment states, and I quote, "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens.

Full stop.

The language is plain and clear.

If you are born here, you are a United States citizen.

And this was not an accident.

Following the Civil War, Congress and the states ratified the 14th Amendment to ensure that the children of formerly enslaved people could never again be denied their rights.

It was about making citizenship permanent, equal, and beyond politics, because they recognized, as we do today, that all men are created equal and the United States Supreme Court affirmed this more than a century ago in the United States v. Wong Kim Ark case, which, by the way, was issued 30 years after the 14th Amendment was written, meaning that the justices in Wong Kim Ark were alive and understood exactly what the 14th Amendment was designed to do.

The court - The court ruled that a child - in Wong Kim Ark, the court ruled that a child born in San Francisco to Chinese parents was an American citizen, even though his parents were not.

That principle has held ever since, except in limited circumstances, to kids born here - Except in limited circumstances, kids born here are citizens, no matter their parents' status.

Some people say that undocumented parents aren't "subject to the jurisdiction of the United States," but that is just not true.

In Arizona, we - I prosecute the Mexican drug cartels all the time, members of the Mexican drug cartels all the time.

They are arrested.

They are charged, and they are held accountable under our laws.

If cartel members are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, then so are children who are born to parents from foreign countries.

Congress backed this up in Law 2 in 8 U.S.C.

Section 1401.

And every agency, every agency that deals with citizenship, from the State Department issuing passports to Social Security issuing benefits, has always treated it the same way.

If you are born here, you are a citizen here in the United States.

And let us be clear, no president gets to change that, because birthright citizenship is a constitutional right.

It is not something that one administration can give and another can take away.

Any attempt to end birthright citizenship by executive order is unconstitutional, and would throw our entire legal system into confusion.

Let me also say this.

Why does this matter?

Because citizenship is about stability, fairness, and belonging.

It's about who we are as a nation.

It's about the American dream.

Kids born here should grow up knowing that they are full members of this country, not second class citizens, not stateless.

Make no mistake.

If you create a generation of kids without citizenship, you create a new underclass in America.

That's not who we should be as a nation.

It flies in the face of the promises of the American Revolution.

Thank you.

Next to give his remarks, he will be arguing that it is time to end birthright citizenship.

I want to welcome Mark Krikorian.

Mark is the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

He initiated the creation of the International Network for Immigration Research and has published articles in outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times.

He is the author of “The New Case Against Immigration: Both Legal and Illegal”, and also “How Obama is Transforming America through Immigration.” Mark, you have four minutes.

Both sides in this argument actually have decent arguments.

Horace is correct, self-evidently correct that the framers of the 14th Amendment had no intention of it guaranteeing citizenship to millions of people born to tourists, to foreign workers, foreign students, to illegal immigrants, even to diplomats, because that's the one exception everybody accepts, and it's not a real exception.

We can talk about that in the back and forth.

But Kris and Chris have a sensible argument, too, because there's an old story of G.K.

Chesterton talked about the fence.

Don't tear down a fence until you know what the fence was for to begin with.

We've been doing it this way for a long time.

And so there needs to be, our side needs to articulate a reason that we should change this, in my opinion.

And there is a good reason to change it.

And I think what we need to first start talking about is a few numbers.

This isn't a math class.

There's no quiz, but numbers matter.

The scale of the phenomenon that we now deal with is completely different from anything that existed in the past.

With modern transportation, people are now coming in the millions to the United States.

And air travel is a great thing, I wouldn't be here otherwise.

I wouldn't be riding a horse to come out to Phoenix.

But it has real consequences.

And the - and somebody once said, quantity has a quality all its own.

Things are fundamentally different today than they were back then.

We have 2 million non-immigrant admissions every year.

200 million, excuse me.

200 million foreign students, tourists, foreign workers, etc., every year.

Nothing like this was possible in the past.

DHS estimated last year - estimated this year that last year, we had more than 3.5 million non-immigrants - in other words, foreigners, but people not - who don't have green cards but are legal.

3.5 million living here essentially permanently as foreign students, foreign workers, etc.

And we have something like 15 million illegal immigrants living in the United States.

The number is lower than it was in January, number's actually going down, but it's still a very large phenomenon.

So what we see is that something like 10% of all births in the United States are to people who would, you know, under a different interpretation of that 14th Amendment, not be covered.

There's something like a quarter million births to illegal immigrants every year, something like 70,000 births to non-immigrants who live here, foreign workers, and then an unknown number, thousands of kids born to birth tourists, people who come here specifically in order to get a passport for the kid, but the kid never grows up here.

So that means over a period of a decade, we're talking 3 million plus people are born and are deemed U.S.

citizens under current practice, who would not under a different interpretation of this Amendment.

This is why, because of this same phenomenon applying to every other country in the world because of cheap and easy transportation, every developed country in the world except the United States and Canada has ended automatic birthright citizenship.

They do it in different ways.

There's like a statute of limitations, as it were, in some places.

So they're - we can, in fact, in the back and forth, maybe even debate how it's done.

But every country other than the U.S.

and Canada has ended it.

Australia, Britain, you name it.

Canada hasn't ended it because we are Canada's border patrol.

We can't - you can't walk from Canada - you can't walk to Canada without going through the United States.

So it's easy for them to keep that in place.

But the fact is conditions have changed, fundamentally changed, and as Lincoln said, "as our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew," which is why, however we do it, we need to revisit this idea that anybody born here under any circumstances is automatically a U.S.

citizen.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And finally, taking the position that America should not end birthright citizenship, I want to welcome to the stage Chris Newman.

Chris is the legal director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.

He was counsel in a coalition lawsuit that challenged Arizona's SB 1070 in federal court, and was a founding coordinator of the Wage Clinic and Legal Program at El Centro Humanitario para los Trabajadores.

He teaches at the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.

Chris, thanks so much for joining us on the program.

The floor is yours to tell us why you're arguing that we should not end birthright citizenship.

Thank you everyone.

Thank you, John.

Part of our obligation as citizens in this country, in recognizing our history, is that we periodically have to reform our immigration laws and modernize them.

And our generation, previous generations did this.

They expanded notions of citizenship and welcomed in the stranger and made our system more fair and more prosperous.

Our generation is failing to modernize immigration laws despite a national consensus that we need to do it.

And it is a symptom of how bad this debate has gone off the rails - that a debate about immigration reform has led to us coming here today to talk about negating our birthright citizenship.

I can't help but acknowledge that we're having this debate on what used to be O'odham land.

And then after that was Mexico.

As recently as 15 years ago, this was the state that modeled the law after Nazi Germany, the "papers please" law that I had the privilege of fighting in court alongside documented, undocumented immigrants and their children who defended civil rights for all of us.

And I know that doing a so-called land acknowledgment will earn me the scorn and mockery of Fox News, you know, who decry the woke.

It might even - honestly, it might even end me on an enemies list of Mark's friend Stephen Miller.

And that's not a joke.

And that's not an exaggeration, as he's trying to criminalize organizations like mine.

But I start there because we have to reconcile in this country the good and the bad of our history.

There's incredible heroism in our history, but there's also incredible villainy in a country that was founded by colonial settlers, in a country that engaged in a genocide that arguably is still continuing to this day as indigenous people are being caged in a place called Alligator Alcatraz.

I'll just speak for myself.

Part of how I reconcile those contradictions - how can I love a country that was maybe formed by some people that I didn't like?

How do I love a country that is currently being helmed by a madman who doesn't know anything about this debate?

Literally does not even know about habeas corpus.

Birthright citizenship is foundational for me to reconcile those contradictions.

It is the bedrock - it is not only a right, but it's part of our structure.

It's the crown jewel of our 14th Amendment and our Constitution.

And I'm here to defend it.

We're going to win in court.

Even Mark acknowledges that this is precedent and that he'd have to, you know, in his own writings has acknowledged that they'd have to amend the Constitution again.

Well, good luck reamending a Constitution that ended the Civil War, literally ended the Civil War and glued our country, which was torn apart, back together.

Our founding fathers initially fought against tyranny - the ones we read about in history books, Washington, Hamilton, and the like.

But our founding fathers weren't just born and lived around 1776.

We had founding fathers, including Abraham Lincoln, who brought this country back together and including Frederick Douglass, who I would say, argued more for the 14th Amendment than anybody.

And I'm going to close with my remarks in hopefully 30 seconds, my God, John, don't cut me - by quoting the great Frederick Douglass, who gave speeches for years about immigration after having fought for and won the 14th Amendment.

He said, "I have great respect for the blue eyed and light haired races of America.

They are a mighty people.

In any struggle for the good things of this world they need have no fear.

[No fear, guys.]

They need - have no need to doubt that they will get their full share.

But I reject the arrogant and scornful theory by which they would limit migratory rights, or any other essential human rights to themselves, and which would make them the owners of this great continent to the exclusion of other races of men."

That's what's at stake.

The courts can handle the law.

It's up to us to develop the values that undergirded the 14th Amendment.

And I'm pleased to be here.

Thank you, Chris.

All right.

We're going to move on to our second round and in our second round, we have more of a free-flowing conversation, but I just want to share a little bit of what I think I heard in the opening arguments, where the dividing lines are.

We heard the side arguing to end birthright citizenship making essentially two arguments.

One is that the 14th Amendment, they say, was not - was meant to apply to freed slaves and their descendants, that it was not meant to expand to include its application in the ways that we're seeing today, which they say is a situation that could not have been imagined in terms of mass immigration, including - but as I said, the numbers are a case where quantity becomes quality, that we're in a situation where people who are - I think your sense of it was the people who don't really have a commitment to America and its values are nevertheless becoming American citizens, perhaps not even with the intention to stay, and that that's a situation out of control.

You point out that most other Western democracies do not observe birthright citizenship.

Now, to get to the other side, we're hearing the argument made that this is not a policy choice, that birthright citizenship is a clear constitutional right.

It's a - it's a right that should go beyond politics, that the language is plain and clear because it's in the Constitution.

And that, I think we were hearing from Chris also that in your message being that birthright citizenship actually nails an essential American value, traditional American value that's been standing for a long time.

But let's spend a little bit of time on that.

I'll take it to you, Attorney General, your opponents saying that this Amendment, this right, that birthright citizenship was not created with - and with the world as it exists today in mind, that they did not imagine mass immigration and the application to people who are not African Americans, recently freed slaves.

Birthright citizenship actually predates the 14th Amendment.

So it actually goes back to the American colonies.

And it goes back to Great Britain, which had birthright citizenship.

So the American colonies and early American states had birthright citizenship because they knew we needed a country that was vibrant, that had, you know, economic growth, that had growth potential.

I mean, think about it.

If we didn't have birthright citizenship in the United States at our founding, none of us would be citizens, none of us.

We were all immigrants at some point.

And then you go up to the 14th Amendment.

It clearly states that every person born here is a citizen.

And then you go to Wong Kim Ark, which again, as I said, was issued by Supreme Court justices who were probably lawyers at the time that the 14th Amendment was passed.

So clearly, and again, in that case, they reaffirmed that the 14th Amendment covered everyone, and applied to all immigrants, and said that their children would become citizens of the United States.

Horace?

Well, as a friend of Stephen Miller and a person who regularly appears on Fox, I would like to say that you are entitled to your opinion, but not to your facts, that if you look at Justice Harlan's dissent, it walks through.

Now Justice Harlan, as I mentioned, was the dissenter - Right.

- in the most important civil rights case, Plessy v Ferguson.

And it took 60 years for his view that the founders, the - excuse me, the drafters of the 14th Amendment never intended for the application that the state of Louisiana was claiming, which is that governments have the power to discriminate on the basis of race.

He argues similarly that the 14th Amendment did not incorporate the British system, and in fact that the drafters of the 14th Amendment never intended for this to occur.

He did this, if I may, he did this in as a person who was alive during the Civil War, and who - Yeah, I want to wrap this up though.

Yeah, and - He wanted to make it clear.

He wanted to make it clear that what - that what happened was an atrocity against the interests of all of the people who sacrificed their lives.

That was his point.

A couple of points.

One is birthright citizenship is a feudal idea from England that everybody born was owned by the king in effect.

That was where birthright citizenship comes from.

It's not an argument against it, but that's what - that's where it comes from.

And it's true that it's actually simpler to have birthright citizenship.

It is more streamlined and easier to deal with.

But the one point I'd want to bring up in sort of the - the sort of pettifogging over the language, subject to the jurisdiction thereof, the real question is, what does that mean?

And Indians - I need you to educate folks folks as to why youre picking that phrase Because the phrase is everybody born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof - the whole debate is about that phrase.

What does that mean?

What is subject to the jurisdiction thereof?

The Secretary of State says, well, I prosecute people, therefore they're subject to my jurisdiction - Sounds like a very persuasive argument Yeah, but the question is, what does that mean?

Are you subject to the exclusive jurisdiction?

In other words, the issue is the interpretation of that statement.

And the only one point I'd want to make is that the reason that was inserted was that is to except, to remove from that rule Indians living on reservations.

And yet they would be prosecuted if they committed criminal offenses.

So, by your definition, they were subject to the jurisdiction.

But by the definition of the framers of the Amendment, explicitly were perceived of as not being subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.

So my point is, we're debating that phrase and what it means.

And there's a good faith arguments on either side.

I want to get to the discussion of the consequences.

The Attorney General brought up the point that if birthright citizenship were taken away, it would create a class of stateless children.

That sounds like - that's a real thing.

What's your response to that?

My response to that is, absolutely that is something we want to avoid.

Having adult U.S.-born illegal aliens is an absurdity in a democratic system.

You don't want that, which is why countries that have ended birthright citizenship have made provisions for that.

For instance, Australia has a kind of ten-year statute of limitations.

France ended birthright citizenship, but the way they deal with it is the kid has the citizenship of his parents until he turns 18, at which point he can then opt - so my point is - Yes, there are ways to deal with it.

Look, I mean, they're completely glossing over the fact that the president of the United States is absolutely, abjectly violating the constitutional - the Constitution and federal law.

And, you know, you can't just gloss over that.

Like, I mean, what are the consequences of this?

Those are important consequences.

I'll - let me quote Justice Kavanaugh, who, when they first took up this issue on procedural grounds, said on the day after it goes into effect, this is Justice Kavanaugh asked, how's it going to work?

What do hospitals do with the newborn?

What do states do with a newborn?

Anyone having a child, if this were to go into effect, would face the problem of demonstrating the child's citizenship.

I recall the moment that I had my baby 12.5 years ago in the hospital.

What am I supposed to do as a new mom, produce my birth certificate?

produce my mom's birth certificate?

These are real questions, but they're administrative questions.

They're not - and your point about - But the president didn't solve them [overlapping remarks] Wait, wait, wait, please.

We are not solely debating the president's executive order.

We are debating the principle of birthright citizenship, just to be clear.

Chris, you haven't had a word in a while.

Well, I mean, what are you proposing, then, Mark?

Answer the question.

So status quo is on our side.

Everyone expects it.

They're born - you know, you're proposing changing the law.

So let's leave Trump out of it.

What do you propose?

What evidence is sufficient?

Are we showing birth certificates before we go into hospitals?

How do, by the way, how do we find out who the fathers are?

You cited statistics - excuse me, you cited statistics, which again, I think come from your organization, which is deemed a hate group, founded by eugenicists.

Okay, that's not true.

Let me, let me, let me quote a statistic.

Between 5 to 10 - between 5 to - no, excuse me.

Its a value we try to perpetulate not to do add hominem attacks.

can you make your point without reffering to his record background, associations whatever Well, it's a historical fact that the organization was founded by eugenecists.

And the issue here is to rebut the idea of eugenicists.

But we don't even know who the parents are.

It's estimated that 10% of parents aren't the biological parents that they - that they think.

How do, you know, how do we go about going and finding the father?

How does that work?

What about an orphan?

How do you - what do you do with an orphan in Kansas?

These are real - these are real questions that France deals with.

Australia deals with, Britain deals with.

Developed countries deal with this.

So make America like France again?

Or like Australia again, or like Britain again.

Great.

In this respect, maybe because we have, rightly, I think rightly, resisted a change because we have a different kind of historical experience of immigration.

But my point is, times have changed and we need to work through those details.

It's not that hard to do.

It can be done.

Congress needs to do it, in my opinion, so I'll concede that to you, but - Let me understand to dig a little bit deeper to you Mark and if you could do in thirty seconds it would be helpful because time is passing quickly Whats the harm of a world in which birthright citizenship is granted whats going wrong in the culture what... Senate what?

What - in the current situation where you have mass arrival of people who do not have a commitment to the United States, you have - you're diluting U.S.

citizenship and giving it out like you're giving out credit cards.

All right.

[overlapping remarks] I'm going to try to - I'm going to try to give you the benefit of the doubt and suggest that that wasn't a racist comment, right?

its not a racist comment No, no, no, no.

Because that - because I think - That itself is a ad hominem attack They do not - American - Immigrants do not dilute anything.

Hold it.

Attorneys General with respect to your office we want to stay away from from these attacks and labeling, please and just go with the ideas So he can say anything he wants - he can say anything that - offensive that he wants about - about immigrants?

he can say what what he wants to say about this issue Let me - I will respond in substance to what he just said.

Immigrants to the United States pay taxes.

They grow our country.

They grow our labor force.

They are more likely than American citizens to become entrepreneurs and to contribute to creativity and the growth of our country.

What you just said is offensive, and it is wrong.

You're making - you're - excuse me, excuse me.

Ma'am, you're making arguments about what immigration policy should be, and I'm - arent you No, I'm not.

Mark, I want to let your teammate isnt it about immigration policy We have heard - We have heard the parade of horribles.

Part of the problem here is that the Supreme Court in 1898 got it wrong, and they have constitutionalized the answer and the solution.

If they had not gotten it wrong, we would have the ability to make adjustments as might be appropriate and needed.

In this particular case, America has a political demand, and that political demand is that we stop the level of immigration, the level of migration.

We have an executive order.

We have other challenges that stand for the proposition that this ought to be addressed in the political arena.

Chris, I want to - I want to read something to you to get your response to it, and I'd like both sides to talk about it.

I'm quoting from the economist Michael Fix.

"The U.S.

was established in rejection of - [this is recent] The U.S.

was established in rejection of monarchy and hereditary privilege, embracing the idea that each person is born equal and should not bear the burdens or legal status of their parents," which I think goes directly to this question of birthright citizenship.

If a child is born with parents who have entered the country illegally, that they should not have to pay a price for that, that that's a value, a core American value, Michael Fix is arguing.

I would like you to kick that around.

Right.

And we don't want our definition of citizenship to be defined by political debates, particularly when our politics have broken down in this country.

This notion of consensual citizenship is exactly what the 14th Amendment overturned.

After all, several states define citizenship as having excluded African Americans, people who were enslaved.

And one of the core fallacies that you guys are engaged in in this argument is, I mean, essentially you have two arguments: that the court case was wrongly decided and that times have changed.

Okay, well, times are going to keep changing and we're going to have to keep evolving our laws.

But part of what makes us American is that we do not ascribe the sins of our fathers as an entry point for our right.

The birthright belongs to the - to the child, to the citizen.

It belongs to me.

My mom was an immigrant.

I have no idea what her status was when she was born.

I never will, necessarily.

It's my right.

The right - you know, what's happening with the parent - you want to regulate, Mark, and you've been 30 years at it.

You want to regulate birth tourism, do it statutorily, you know, prohibit birthright citizens from, you know, naturalizing or sponsoring their parents if they ever come back from France or whatever other country you want to live in.

Do that through an evolution of immigration law.

Don't do that by reaching back and relitigating the Civil War, which is literally what you guys are doing.

I'm actually in favor of Congress making the change, not the president doing it.

I don't think the president has the authority to do it.

The Amendment itself provides for Congress making the change.

Section five - Yes, my beef is with what the parents are doing in order to give birth to the kids in the United States as Americans.

Birth tourism - look, let's talk about birth tourism.

Birth tourism is where a foreigner buys a package deal.

This is from all over the world.

That happens from - in China, Russia, Nigeria, Turkey, every place.

They have a package deal - come to the United States when they're, say six months pregnant, have the kid here, stay and recover until the State Department and the Social Security Administration send the passport and the Social Security card, and then they leave and the kid never sees the United States.

sound like one of these phantom invasion threats but even it was true There's thousands of people like that every year.

even if thats true why then punish the kid?

Why reward it?

Why reward that?

Why would we reward that conduct?

We're not punishing the kid.

The kid still has the citizenship of his parents.

You guys act as if the only reason that immigrants come to the United States is birthright citizenship.

But in reality, people come to the United States because they're fleeing war-torn countries.

They come for, you know, freedom.

They come for economic opportunity far more than they come here, you know, for "birth tourism."

I mean, you know, you forget all of the other reasons that immigrants come to the United States and that have been coming to the United States since our founding.

And then I think you also ignore the fact, and I would like to make this point while I still have the chance, that every single judge that has looked at this issue has ruled against you, and they're going to continue to rule against you as we get to the Supreme Court.

So we've talked about the legal bit a little bit.

So I'm going to not ask for your response to that, but to the first question - point that the Attorney General made.

You're arguing - you're making these cases about birth - birth tourism, etc., and she's making the argument that way more people come to here - come to the United States for truly better lives, for the freedom.

Those things are American values.

There's an ability and a pathway to assimilate.

All of us - all of us are the descendants of people who assimilated and used birthright citizenship, maybe not in the numbers 100 years ago as now, but nevertheless, she's - she feels that you're mischaracterizing the motivation of most people who come and exercise birthright citizenship.

All of the things that were just described can happen without being associated with citizenship.

We can get the growth.

We can get the visit.

Wait, to argue that you must grant that to get that isn't really an accurate charge.

To also argue that this is an attack on the children - if Mom and Dad go and rob the bank and then give the money to their kids and you take it back, you're not taking it from the kids.

What you're saying is that what the adults did was a crime.

Mark.

Yeah, and the thing is, I think what you're doing is conflating legal and illegal immigration.

That's the - that's the core issue here.

Obviously, people come for all kinds of reasons.

People come because they have relatives, they want to get a job, their own country is sort of a mess, you know.

I know lots of immigrants.

In fact, I mean, I - when I was a kid, I didn't even speak English until I went to kindergarten.

I didn't even know old people spoke without accents until I went to high school.

I thought it was just Grandpa Walton on TV.

So I have a lot of experience with immigration.

The issue here is legal versus illegal immigration, and we cannot blur the difference between legal and illegal immigration.

Legal immigrants, when they have kids, those kids are citizens and we should continue that policy.

The issue is, should illegal immigrants be permitted, in effect, to be rewarded?

The lines of legality and illegality are blurred at this moment.

They were definitely blurred for Wong Kim Ark.

Let's remember the facts of the case.

His parents were prohibited - you couldn't naturalize in this country without being white until 1952.

That's when we eliminated the whiteness requirement.

Wong Kim Ark's parents fled San Francisco because there were mass lynchings.

He went to go visit them and came back a natural born citizen.

There was no legal way for his parents to - and I think you would agree that the Chinese Exclusion Act is wrong, right?

Sure.

Yeah, absolutely.

Mark, would you been at that time going, no, but what part of illegal don't you understand?

Chinese, Japanese, they can't be citizens.

And, you know, gosh, we shouldn't reward them.

I mean, is that - is that - that's sophistry.

look at the facts in that particular case and you say, well, we don't like the underlying policy issues that led to that, so therefore, it's okay for the court to create at a whole-call a solution when that very court failed to focus - not Abraham Lincoln, no, no, Abraham Lincoln did not draft the 14th Amendment.

I have to jump in again as we move towards the future.

We have questions from some students at Arizona State University.

We asked them to submit questions and we have only a few minutes left now to get to those.

Jake, an entrepreneurship major, asks, and I think this is a question for this side, is a - if a pathway to citizenship for all current DACA students was offered in exchange for the ending of birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, would you support it?

Would I take it?

Yeah, absolutely I would.

I'm a squishy on amnesty, honestly.

Yeah, absolutely.

Other side want to respond to that?

If not, I'm going to move on to the next question.

They wouldn't - I mean, it's not - it's sort of unbalanced, but yeah, sure, I'd leap at the opportunity.

No, and the policy decision undergirding DACA was, at the time, the same policy decision undergirding the original intent of the Amendment, which is you don't blame the child for the actions of the parents.

That's fundamentally American.

Lets assume, this is from Matthew a financial planning major Lets a assume its the day after birthright citizenship is abolished, What is happening in the United States?

This is a policy solution.

All that the court is actually going to say is, we were wrong in 1898, and now we're giving you the space to make these decisions.

That will mean your representatives, your senators, who are accountable to you, will start making these decisions.

The parade of horribles was presented to all of America when Dobbs came before the Supreme Court.

I have not seen all of these deaths in the street.

I have not seen all of the outrageous things that were claimed as a result.

America has decided to take action.

And they have.

You really want to get into Dobbs?

I mean, that's outrageous.

And we could go for an hour on that and explain it to you.

But, let me say this.

What would happen?

I mean, what I talked about earlier, parents would be placed into chaos and one of the reasons that that the state of Arizona and half of the other states in this country are suing the Trump administration over the executive order is that it is going to increase costs on the state of Arizona.

It is going to cause chaos for hospitals who are going to have to try to determine paternity, maternity status, citizenship status inside the hospitals.

It's going to cause chaos in terms of determining who has access to benefits and who doesn't have access to benefits, who has access to education.

We are going to lose tax revenue from folks who are here, who are - who are born to undocumented citizens and and if I could just go back, again, this goes back to our founding fathers, who believed that birthright citizenship conveyed automatically allegiance to the United States of America.

And that is why we have always had birthright citizenship in this country.

And we always will.

If Congress were to change the rules because section five of the Amendment says Congress has authority to implement measures to enforce this Amendment, all of its various parts, you would have a legislation that says as of January 1st, whatever it is, it will be prospective.

Hospitals wouldn't have to do anything.

It would be up to state health departments, and you would have to demonstrate - you'd have to show the Social Security number that the father or mother, one or the other, was either a legal resident, a green card holder, or a citizen.

In other words, it's a practical thing.

[overlapping remarks] Wait a minute, a Social Security number wouldn't show anything.

You could be an immigrant and have a Social security number, and also be then deportable.

What you would - the slippery slope, the Pandora's box that you're opening up is you're talking about actual DNA testing.

DNA testing that the government now has - these masked ICE agents are going to come take blood.

Can I use - can I use a - I'm going to use a personal example.

I had my baby through IVF.

I had my baby with my - with my best friend who I met here at ASU.

He helped me have my baby.

But what if I had had my baby using sperm from a man in Portugal?

If you were an illegal alien, it might not - it wouldn't apply maybe.

If you were an illegal alien, you or the kid wouldn't get - Your saying both parents have to be American No, I'm not saying both parents.

One or the other - but thats a policy choice Yes, that's what I'm saying.

It's a policy choice.

He's asking what would - And you have to overturn a constitutional ammendment No, you don't, necessarily, because then what would happen is it's the interpretation of that phrase, which the Supreme Court may interpret differently.

But birthright citizenship doesn't answer your scenario.

You could still be subject to a DNA test if someone says, oh, well, my parents were both born here or I was born here while they gave birth to me.

I'm an American citizen.

And you were in Germany at the time that you give birth.

Was here in the United States Tyler, a business manager at ASU, asks, why is one of the Civil War amendments still relevant today?

I think we've discussed that, but what I would want to do is, should that history be part of this conversation anymore, or should we be looking forward?

Absolutely.

It should be part of it, but it should - it does - It's not necessarily dispositive.

That's my point.

And the question is, what do we do now?

What we did then is part of that discussion, absolutely.

But the question now is, with, as Lincoln said, our circumstances are new, we have to act anew and think anew.

Yeah, our circumstances are new.

We had a Black president.

Our current president was running around with the former sheriff of this county saying, we don't believe.

Show me your papers, President Obama.

That is the type of debate that you're inviting by altering, by tinkering with the crown jewel of the U.S.

Constitution.

You're inviting that kind of - let's admit it, that was racist.

Where's - where's - okay, excuse me.

What you're doing is literally - asked the same question And?

about his status because he was born in the canal zone Please.

Please.

[overlapping remarks] same time, you get 15 more seconds It wasn't racist.

It was part and parcel of the conversation that has been artificially cramped because of what the Supreme Court did.

[overlapping remarks] So Donald Trump saying, I don't believe you, Barack Obama, that you're a U.S.

citizen, show me your papers.

That wasn't racist?

That same question was asked of John McCain.

and thank you for the questions from the ASU students.

Sorry we couldnt get to more were going to go into our closing round and thats where each of the debators takes the floor again to make a closing statement on their arguments and first up will be Horace youre first up right?

Here or there?

you stand up there Horace once again just to remind people your taking the position that we should end Birthright citizenship your last chance to tell us why Birthright citizenship has not served America well.

It particularly has not served Black Americans.

And if you look around at survey after survey, what you were finding is a large group of native-born Black Americans are increasingly hostile to immigrants.

Immigrants made this country what it is, and we should be encouraging migration.

But when we have policies that create the impression that there are people who no longer, let's say, your child has difficulty in the classroom with reading, let's say, you have someone who has an alcoholism problem.

Our social insurance programs are predicated on the idea that all of us contribute, and few of us take out of it.

Many Black Americans live in communities where they are finding, in particular, other Americans are discovering this as well.

They are finding that our newest visitors are ending up competing, at least when they are youngest, and that has created a racial animosity that has created a hostility.

We absolutely should be allowed to respond to these concerns and allow our elected officials to develop techniques and tools to address them.

Thank you.

Thank you, Horace.

Next up, our Attorney General here in Arizona, Kris Mayes.

One more time, the floor is yours to tell us why you're taking your side.

Thank you.

Thank you again for having us.

You know, one of the things that I find when I talk to the children of undocumented citizens is that they are so patriotic.

They love this country.

They love this country more than most people that I come across.

They believe in this country.

They want to be here.

And those are exactly the kind of people that we want with us.

I want to close with these words from Ronald Reagan.

He said, "I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it.

But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and [in] peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity.

And if there had to be city walls," Ronald Reagan said, "the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.

That's how I saw it and see it still," said Ronald Reagan.

America's promise to the world is one of freedom and hope, the opportunity to build a new life for yourself or your descendants in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Birthright citizenship is the guarantee of that promise.

Ending it would mean ending - mean the end of the America that so many have fought and died for, to protect for 250 years.

And we can never accept that.

Thank you.

thank you attorney general Mark the floor is yours one more time why you are advocating against It's a red letter day when Democrats are quoting Ronald Reagan.

The only reason we're having this debate is because of mass illegal immigration.

This isn't just the two of us and, you know, the evil Stephen Miller and the bad orange man dreaming this up.

This concern about automatic citizenship for children born to people who are either illegal immigrants or visitors is something that is broadly shared.

It is a salient political issue only because of mass illegal immigration.

If you really want to preserve the political conditions that allow the current practice of automatic citizenship to anybody born here to continue, and there's an argument for it, as I've said, it's streamlined.

It simplifies things.

If that's what you want, then you must be especially muscular and hawkish in your approach to preventing mass illegal immigration.

This whole debate is a consequence of the kind of things we saw over the past four years, where the Biden administration allowed the unlawful admission of at least 10 million contrary to the law.

If you want to preserve birthright citizenship, as we have been practicing it, for a long time, you need to end illegal immigration.

Chris Newman, you get the last word.

Once again, your closing statement on why we should not be ending birthright citizenship.

If it is true that the United States is the only country that has citizenship associated with land, then that's something that we should fight for.

We shouldn't change it.

We shouldn't be looking to France and Australia, because some people are scared of the future, which is really what the arguments from the other side come down to.

And those are imagined fears that could be solved through, you know, actual visas.

A real fear is that my son, when Trump was elected this last time, asked if his grandmother was going to be deported.

He knew that she was in the country undocumented.

My - the mother of my son, my soulmate, was a born citizen to undocumented immigrants who later became citizens under the 86 Amnesty and now pledge allegiance to the flag.

The fear of my son was real.

Very real.

What's gonna happen to my grandma?

To even have this debate, to put it into question for millions of people engaged in similar conversations, is gaslighting people about their birthright.

And the debate itself, normally, debates are good.

You know, we get to an answer.

To have this debate is dangerous because it forces us back to the Civil War.

I'm going to pull out, for my final minute, the author, the actual author of the First Amendment - or the first section of this, of the 14th Amendment was John Bingham, and he said, in 1867, right as it was being ratified, "We propose that to settle the difficulty of the Dred Scott decision by putting into the Constitution, if a man is not a citizen of the country which he is born, in God's name in what country is he a citizen?

If he may not live here, where does he have a right to live?

We propose to put it in the power of every man, woman, and child, Black or white, rich or poor, when his rights are invaded, to raise his hand to the flag and say that I am an American citizen."

He was interrupted by applause.

He continued, "Why should it not now be that all are free?

Why should not - why not should the man whose fetters melted away in the fire of rebellion enjoy the same protection as the laws of the blood-stained enemies in this country?

Will government be so weakened by putting its citizens on a common basis?

I propose we strengthen the Union by supporting the measure that makes every man born here a citizen."

Thank you, Chris Newman.

That is a wrap on this debate.

I want to thank you members of the audience who asked questions.

I want to thank Arizona State's University of Politics, as well as Arizona PBS for partnering with us on this debate and for hosting us at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

And I especially want to thank our debaters Mark, Horace, the Attorney General Kris Mayes, and Chris Newman for approaching this debate in the way that they did.

You, for the most part, showed respect for one another.

[laughter] At least you took the directions from me when I asked everybody to calm it down, and we really appreciated that.

We like to - we like to finish with a little bit of stagecraft, stage theater, in which everybody steps to the middle and shakes hands with one another.

No dancing.

[laughter] What, you don't want to dance with me?

[laughter] [applause]