Cat, I think we talked about this before. It turns out, the 14th amendment did not give the children of Native Americans citizenship.

There was even a court ruling that the child of Native Americans had allegiance to their tribe, not the USA.

It does seem that, given the intent of the 14th amendment and those who penned it, giving the children of illegal immigrants citizenship is an abuse of the law.

My understanding is that indians were denied citizenship under the 14th because they were born on sovereign soil and therefore not within the US. I could be wrong but that is what I took from those late 1800 decisions.

The treaties said the reservations we're sovereign. That was never given much more than lip service since they couldn't form militaries or have foreign policy.

By the early 20th century the idea of sovereign native tribes was fully ditched and they became taxable and fully subject to US law

In the 1800s the native tribes were *in theory* not subject to US jurisdiction. It was a farce that was finally ended in the early 1900s.

And we have the direct word from the orchestrator and writer of the amendment that it was not meant to apply to foreign nationals.

I can try and find a direct quote, if you'd like.

I've read quotes and it tells me the opposite

Are there any potential solutions to the reservation-system out there. I mean if the majority of the tribes in the US live in extreme poverty maybe the system isn't working.

Hence why we have 150 years of case law all the way to the Supreme Court

Giving them shitty land and throwing money at them doesn't fix their situation.

Part of the problem is that the Federal government supposedly makes resource decisions in thier interest but plenty of evidence proves thier resources are granted to corporations for next to nothing

There are plenty of lawsuits about that

There's also tons of cronyism and mismanagement within the tribes

My gut solution would be to turn the reservations into states with their own constitutions but function in a way at least similar to a regular state.

That is how they are already handled, @Dvir

Reservations are ruled by tribes and they have greater autonomy in many regards than a state.

Tribes are under the authority of the Federal govt but not any state. They have constitutions.

The issue is that most tribes signed away thier resource rights to the Federal govt in thier treaties with the understanding that the Feds would manage them "in the tribe's interests"

What could possibly go wrong with that? /s

Ah, here we are.

I think I am starting to understand. In such a scenario the best case the resources are managed by the feds and the wealth given to the tribe, but even in such a case you are creating a dependency on the federal government and you keep the tribe trapped in such a state.

Yup

Senator Jacob Howard, a drafter of the 14th amendment: "This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons."

The relationship between the Federal govt and the tribe's has always been extremely paternalistic. The "great white father".

In the records of Senate discussions on the 14th amendment, recorded in The Congressional Globe, May 30th, 1866.

I've been told that the quote has had commas attached

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llcg&fileName=073/llcg073.db&recNum=11.

I'm not at my PC or I'd try to pull up an actual quote

The Lawmakers said that it was never intended to be used with foreign people, the 14th is for Slaves, not for Illegal Aliens

The original source, in its entirety, you may peruse the entire context at your leisure, when you're able to.

Again, I dispute the comma after "aliens"

Unfortunately, voice recording technology was limited in the 1860's.

Its a misuse and abuse of the Original Intend that we have here. And the Supreme Court ruled at least twice. You really should watch the Justicar Video I've posted!
At one point he said "we lower court judges", so he might be a judge and know it better than we do.

Print is all we have.

So if our interpretation is so wrong how has it lasted for 150 years with a trail of precedent all through that time? This is not a new issue.

because it wasn't really an issue until recently, because the immigration act of ~1964 or so....

And again, if you were willing to remove illegals from US jurisdiction, I think it'd pass muster.

I...I'm not sure what you mean.