Does the Constitution Infer a Path to Citizenship?

   If you would, read the Constitution -- and read it thoughtfully. If you do, you just might question whether it grants any authority to restrict immigration.
   Now, here's a thought: If the Constitution doesn't grant such authority, and if government is restricting immigration, anyway, is it government that is being illegal, rather than the immigrant, and should we not then be speaking of Washington as being an "illegal government," instead of speaking of those coming from outside our borders as being "illegal immigrants"?
   Well, if you are the government, and you disobey your own constitution, doesn't that make you an "illegal government"?
   So, before we take this whole national discussion on immigration any further, it might be worthy to open the Constitution, read it, and consider what it says.
   It should be our authority on this matter.
   It does talk about naturalization. In Article I, Section 8, in enumerating the powers of Congress, it spells out that the federal government has authority, "to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization."
    So, we should ask: Is "naturalization" the very same thing as "immigration"? Are the terms identical? Are they interchangeable? Or, do they have little different meanings? Does "naturalization" refer only to the process of granting citizenship once people arrive --with no restriction on whether they come? Does the fact that the word "naturalization" is used instead of "immigration" or "migration" suggest that a path to citizenship ought to be guaranteed to all immigrants?
  Well, does it?
   Naturalization appears to be the process by which those born abroad are granted equal status with those born here. There can be no such naturalization if there isn't a path to citizenship.
   For that is what the term is all about.
  So, it is we in our day who speak of "a path to citizenship." We coined the term. Back in the day, was a path to citizenship assumed? Was it a given?  Did the forefathers take it for granted? To them, was it a foregone conclusion?
   To read the Constitution, you must wonder but what it surely was. It certainly seems to. Forsooth, I say, the highest law in the land does appear to be mandating a path to citizenship.
  You look at our nation's first laws on naturalization, enacted in the 1790s, and you will see they made no effort to restrict immigration, nor to set rules by which people could come. No, they only established rules by which those already here would be naturalized
    They laid out the path to citizenship. That's all.