Republicans have for years been squeamish about the issue of so-called birthright citizenship. It’s about time they man up and begin making the case for righting this clear constitutional wrong.

The first step in this process may have taken place yesterday with the introduction of a House bill that would clarify the original intent of birthright citizenship as expressed in the language 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.”

At issue is the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” which the open-borders Left has wrongly claimed to mean “within the physical borders of.”

The authors of the 14th Amendment disagree.

As constitutional scholar Matt Spalding argued in a 2018 piece titled “The Case Against Birthright Citizenship”: “The crucial phrase is ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’ As originally understood when Congress proposed the amendment in 1866, that referred not merely to the obligation of following U.S. laws but also, and more important, to full political allegiance. According to Lyman Trumbull — who was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a co-author of the 14th Amendment — being ‘subject to the complete jurisdiction of the United States’ meant ‘not owing allegiance to anybody else.’”

The House bill, called the End Birthright Citizenship Fraud Act of 2023, was introduced yesterday ahead of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s appearance today before the House Judiciary Committee. According to a press release from the bill’s author, Florida Republican Matt Gaetz, “If passed, the legislation would deny automatic citizenship at birth to children born within the United States whose parents are not U.S. nationals — excluding aliens lawfully admitted as refugees or permanent residents or performing active services in the U.S. Armed Forces.”

The Armed Forces carveout is a good one. Those willing to serve in our nation’s military are already demonstrating their allegiance to the United States. The bill is meant to combat the “anchor baby” tactic of many illegal immigrants, who make their way across our border for the express purpose of giving birth and thereby guaranteeing citizenship for the child despite neither parent being a citizen, and then exploiting the “chain migration” loophole to bring other family members into the U.S.

According to a report by the Center for Immigration Studies, nearly 400,000 so-called “anchor babies” are born in the U.S. each year. Carried out over years and lifetimes, that’s neither an insignificant expense nor an insignificant disruption to the American fabric.

“Birthright citizenship,” says Gaetz, “has been grossly and blatantly misapplied for decades, recently becoming a loophole for illegal aliens to fraudulently abuse our immigration system. My legislation recognizes that American citizenship is a privilege — not an automatic right to be co-opted by illegal aliens.”

Gaetz continues, “This is an important step in preserving the sanctity of American citizenship and ensures that citizenship is not treated as a loophole to be exploited but rather a privilege to be earned when legally migrating to our country.”

To this we say: It’s about time. Admittedly, though, it has little chance of being taken up by the Senate unless vulnerable Democrat senators such as West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Montana’s Jon Tester lobby hard for a vote. Even then, it would have no chance of clearing the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold, and it would have zero chance of being signed by Joe “Open Borders” Biden.

So why even bother? It’s a good question. And the answer is simple: Because this is a great opportunity for an educational moment, a Constitution-clarifying moment. And given the ongoing catastrophe on our southern border, it’s a great issue upon which GOP candidates can campaign in 2024. As we noted earlier, Republicans have been mostly afraid to champion this issue.

As The Daily Caller’s Diana Glebova writes, “Republican presidential candidates are at odds about whether to end birthright citizenship, but several of those polling at the top, including former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, have all said they oppose automatic citizenship for those who enter the country illegally.”

Good for them, and good to get them on the record.

Trump himself has called the Left’s legal case for birthright citizenship “a myth and a willful misinterpretation of the law by open borders advocates.” He added, “The United States is among the only countries in the world that says that even if neither parent is a citizen nor even lawfully in the country, their future children are automatic citizens the moment the parents trespass onto our soil.”

Now’s the time to start a serious discussion about real birthright citizenship versus the phony and costly kind being championed by race-baiting Democrats and their leftist ilk.

We’re either a constitutional republic, or we aren’t.