David Byrne Quotes
I am an immigrant with a Green Card and, therefore, I am not eligible to vote in a federal election.
Byrne, David. "Journal." Davidbyrne.com, 2004.
Surprisingly to most people, American Indians born in the United States were not automatically citizens until this law was passed making them so.
The highest court in New York. At the time only U. S. citizens could own land. Since the majority of the population were farmers, this was a critical limitation with a major inducement to citizenship. Today, that motivation is no more, and critics of our immigration policy are concerned that there is no longer the desire and commitment to be American but just to make money from the American economy with a cultural and political allegiance elsewhere,
Various elements of the 14th amendment were being debated. Language referred to “citizens” but many of the abolitionists and reconstructionists were concerned that the slavery forces in the Southern states would not provide protections to the Negro and the grounds that the were not citizens. As long as the states could define who was and was not a citizen, any of the equal protection clauses of the proposed 14TH Amendment could be evaded. Senator Howard then proposed this language which was accepted and became part of the Amendment. In modern times this particular clause was more relevant to the debate about immigration than to civil rights but originally the clause was included to make sure that Blacks would be citizens.
This was the first restriction on immigration and citizenship, and was at the time uniquely directed against Chinese.
What is interesting, that few people realize, is that large number of men who had never voted before, and would not be able to vote afterwards (the were not property owners for example), were allowed to vote in the ratification debate. As a result, an entire new socio-economic class was empowered and became interested in politics for the first time in history. The result was greater and wider public interest than there had been or would be for many years to come. All voting requirements had been set by the states and were still so after the Constitution was adapted and still is the current situation, although there has been a constant battle in many states to keep Blacks and other minorities from voting between the desires of the states and Federal pressure after the Civil War Constitutional amendments.
David Byrne is a Scottish-American singer, songwriter, record producer, actor, writer, music theorist, and filmmaker, who was a founding member and the principal songwriter, lead singer, and guitarist of the American new wave band Talking Heads.
