If Roger had read my article, he would know that I did not say Trump is right about getting rid of birthright citizenship. This is what I conclude, "The fact that so many countries have rejected birthright citizenship doesn’t justify giving it up, but it does warrant taking a closer look at the practice."

And I am tired of hearing his strained 14th amendment arguments with himself, and it is just a discussion he is having with himself. He is not responding to anything I have said in my article or comments anyone else has made. If birthright citizenship is a bad idea, we should get rid of it even if it requires a constitutional amendment. That's what Ireland did, and 80% of the Irish electorate voted to amend the constitution to get rid of it.

And he has ignored the question I have raised about his claim that Trump wants to get rid of birthright citizenship to keep blacks and other dark skinned people out of the country. If the fact that a white president wants to get rid of birthright citizenship means that he is a white supremacist, what does it say about the leaders of the black, Asian, and Arab countries in the rest off the world who have rejected birthright citizenship. Does it mean that they are racists trying to keep whites out of their country.

Eight out of ten countries in the world have rejected it. In fact, only two developed countries still have it, the US and Canada, and Canada is having second thoughts. That should make any open minded person wonder if maybe we should take another look at whether we should have birthright citizenship.

Nolan Rappaport

Does it really make much sense to single out one particular amendment, the 14th, in our Bill of Rights ans and subject it to a head count test to see how many other countries do the same thing as we do as test of its usefulness? If we do that with the 14th amendment, why not do the same with the other amendments?

How many other countries truly guarantee free speech, as we do in our First Amendment? Not a whole lot, actually? Then let's get rid of it. How about the 2nd Amendment? Are there a whole bunch of other countries that truly protect the right to individual gun ownership? Not really? Then hand in your guns. Sorry about that, NRA.

On could go on add on with this line of reasoning. No one would ever seriously suggest that every single amendment to the US Constitution should be tested on the basis of whether other nations have similar laws or not. So why single out the 14th Amendment's birthright citizenship guarantee for such a headcount test? This is just an excuse to defeat the purpose of the Amendment in guaranteeing full participation in American society and American life to ALL American-born children, without regard to race, creed or color.

I will write separately about the Supreme Court's landmark 1898 Wong Kim Ark case, which even at a very dark time in our history of intense prejudice and hatred against Chinese immigrants, anticipating in many ways Donald Trump's tirades against Latino, Middle Eastern and African immigrants, still upheld the equality of all US born children in terms of their right to participate in our society as full citizens, regardless of their ancestry or parents' national origins.

Roger Algase
Attorney at Law

Roger isn’t responding to anything I said in my article or in my remarks about his comments.

Nolan Rappaport