Strangers to the Constitution: Immigrants, Borders, and Fundamental Law.

TLDR

The author argues that historical and contemporary attempts by U.S. insiders to claim exclusive ownership of the Constitution and deny rights to aliens and immigrants show that all persons under U.S. governance should not be strangers to the Constitution. The study proposes that mutuality of obligation is the most persuasive way to extend constitutional rights extraterritorially to all U.S.

Abstract

Gerald Neuman discusses in historical and contemporary terms the repeated efforts of U.S. insiders to claim the Constitution as their exclusive property and to deny con-stitutional rights to aliens and immigrants - and even citizens if they are outside the nation's borders. Tracing such efforts from the debates over the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798 to present-day controversies about illegal aliens and their children, the author argues that no human being subject to the governance of the United States should be a stranger to the Constitution. Thus, whenever the government asserts its power to impose obligations on individuals, it brings them within the constitutional system and should afford them constitutional rights. In Neuman's view, this mutuality of obligation is the most persuasive approach to extending constitutional rights extraterritorially to all U.S. citizens and to those aliens on whom the United States seeks to impose legal responsibilities. Examining both mutuality and more flexible theories, Neuman defends some constitutional con-straints on immigration and deportation policies and argues that the political rights of aliens need not exclude suffrage. Finally, in regard to whether children born in the United States to illegally present alien parents should be U.S. citizens, he concludes that the Constitution's traditional shield against the emergence of a hereditary caste of illegals should be vigilantly preserved.