Analilia Mejia

New Jersey Rep. Analilia Mejia's (D-11) position as co-chair of a new “task force” to defend the 14th Amendment” has little to do with defending the amendment or interpreting its real meaning in its historical context. The recent unveiling of the “task force,” which is comprised entirely of Democrats, is a vehicle for newly elected Rep. Mejia and her fellow liberal Democrats to continue their efforts to dismantle the foundation of America’s greatness: the U.S. Constitution.

Rep. Mejia’s task force is a vehicle to reward the millions of people who broke our nation’s immigration laws during the irresponsible Biden Administration by bestowing on their descendants the honor of being an American citizen. Mejia believes that the happenstance of birthplace — the occupation of a sliver of American soil at the time of their birth — entitles children born to noncitizens a status indistinguishable from legal immigrants who earned their citizenship by contributing to the greatness of America — not taking from it.

Rep. Mejia, who replaced Mikie Sherrill in Congress in March — and her far left colleagues — are trying to erase the difference between true citizenship as envisioned by our nation’s Founders and those claiming American citizenship for purely financial or political reasons. It is impossible to imagine the Reconstruction Congress envisioned birthright citizenship to be applicable to a person born to a foreign national who visits America on a pregnancy tour.

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Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, in a brilliant rebuttal to the court’s 6-3 majority in the Trump v. Barbara birthright citizenship decision, supplied the proper context of the 14th Amendment. The post-Civil War Congress did not pass the amendment to reward illegal immigrants or birthright vacationers from China. No, they created a constitutional means to undo the wrongs of slavery and to bestow upon those newly freed slaves, such as Dred Scott, who had "a domicile" here — the honor of citizenship.

The Amendment was enacted for men such as Frederick Douglass, who demanded citizenship "not as aliens nor as exiles," but as "Americans" — not to reward the offspring of people who crossed into America illegally with little or no intention of becoming American. Justice Thomas said that by using an “alternative history” of the 14th Amendment, the Supreme Court majority has “devalued” citizenship — which is precisely what Rep. Mejia is doing.

Mejia refuses to draw the distinction between enslaved people living and working on American soil for decades and the children of any foreign citizen who finds her way into the country long enough to give birth. Mejia’s position is a slap in the face of the formerly enslaved and their African-American ancestors living in America today.

Enslaved Americans were freed in the crucible of the Civil War. Soldiers died to end the slavery, not to throw open the doors of citizenship to people sneaking into the country, demanding the benefits of America’s bounty for which they have contributed nothing. Rep. Mejia is blind to the difference.

Rep. Mejia ignores historic precedent, preferring, as many liberal Democrats do, to make illegal immigration a civil rights crusade without consideration of the financial, cultural, national security and social costs of cheapening U.S. citizenship. New Jersey taxpayers foot the bill for Mejia’s pandering to illegal immigrants; they pay for the benefits, services, and legal defense extended to people with no legal right to be here.

Each year millions of dollars are taken from the citizens of this state to support illegal aliens; among those citizens are the descendants of the very enslaved Americans that the 14th Amendment was meant to protect. Rep. Mejia has no passion for the hard-working Black citizens or legal immigrants from Asia, Europe and South America who are struggling to advance their families in the face of the escalating tax burden imposed on them by Democratic policies and programs.

Mejia justifies her historically erroneous position by championing illegal immigration as the offspring of civil rights movement. But that movement fought to win American citizens the rights their own government was denying them — it did not fight to erase the line between citizen and noncitizen. Collapsing that distinction doesn't honor the 14th Amendment; it hollows it out, and it disrespects everyone who actually earned its protections.

New Jersey's 11th District deserves a representative who defends the Constitution as written, not one who uses it as cover to overrun this country with millions of people who have no legal claim to be here, on the backs of the American taxpayer.