"Nor shall any State . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
If the laws protect the person born here from being deported, then going by what it says here in the Constitution, those same laws protect everyone residing in the country from being deported.
Or they should. The 14th Amendment suggests that whatever protections the laws provide, they apply to all living within the jurisdiction of our borders. No exceptions are made. If a person lives here, period, they are entitled to the protection of the laws.
You might not like what those words say, and you might suggest that is not what was intended. Still, the words as they are written are the words that are written. I believe the framers of the 14th Amendment intended for it to protect everyone living here, just as they said.
Back in those days when the Civil War had just been completed, and stretching way back to the days when our nation was founded, they had a different concept of whether people could come here and whether they could stay. The borders were open. You can argue the borders shouldn't be open, but you will have problems arguing they weren't open when our nation was founded.
The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. We should honor it and keep it. If it provides equal protection to the undocumented, we should honor what the Constitution says and extend that protection to them.
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