W. Todd Akin: “My understanding is the same thing. The understanding of that section in the Constitution dated back about to the time…”

“My understanding is the same thing. The understanding of that section in the Constitution dated back about to the time of the Civil War and it was dealing with a different situation and it does not necessarily apply to two people who are here illegally, or just the automatic granting of citizenship just because of where are you born. From my understanding, we could pass a law, and it might be challenged and the courts would have to take a look at that, but there is a good case that could be made to support what you are saying, which is if we are going to talk about birthright, there needs to be at least one parent that is a citizen of the United States. Also, it troubles me that America, and one of the things I love about this country is the fact that America has always been a place where there is just one class of people. We call them Americans. From our Declaration of Independence it says ``all men are created equal.'' That means equal before the law. Nobody is better than anybody else. We have one class of Americans. Yet by us ignoring our own laws on immigration, de facto we are starting to move into or create sort of a second class of citizen that does not really have any rights. They are not subject to the minimum wage or any of those things. They do not have a chance to be part of organized labor or anything like that. They simply come here and if they say anything, they are threatened that they can be sent back over the border.…”