Senate Minority Leader Jon Kyl: “There is a constitutional provision in the 14th Amendment that has been interpreted to provide that, if you are born in the United States, you are a citizen no matter what.”

The first sentence of the 14th Amendment: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”

I’m working on a paper that quite heavily relies on the 14th Amendment’s opening line, and am thus interested in the immigration policy-driven constitutional discussion going on. Another big chunk of the paper is on Congress’ prerogative to identify and enforce constitutional rights, so my instinct is ordinarily to praise Congressional hearings on constitutional provisions, as Sen. McConnell is apparently pushing.

But, in this case let’s call a ridiculous spade a ridiculous spade. If the GOP Senators plan to stall about every vote, citing the deficit, it would seems we could save some resources by skipping hearings into unambiguous text and offering, instead, whatever citizenship-altering amendment these people have in mind.