Most legal experts agree that the 14th Amendment of the Constitution guarantees citizenship to any person born in the US, regardless of parentage. But these lawmakers seek to follow in the steps of the Arizona immigration law, which ignited a national conversation on illegal immigration even though it could be declared unconstitutional by the courts. Similarly, the lawmakers hope to create a public groundswell against "birthright citizenship," forcing Congress to act.

Welfare payments to children of illegal immigrants in Los Angeles County increased in July to $52 million, prompting renewed calls from one county supervisor to rein in public benefits to such families.

The payments, made to illegal immigrants for their U.S. citizen children, included $30 million in food stamps and $22 million from the CalWorks welfare program, according to county figures released Friday by Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich.

DESPITE persistent calls for comprehensive immigration reform, the hot debate today is about an old issue: birthright citizenship.

The citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, adopted in 1868, provides that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States...” This language has traditionally been interpreted to give automatic citizenship to anyone born on American soil, even to the children of illegal immigrants.

Congress plans to hold hearings this fall on a constitutional amendment to change that language, something even moderate Republican senators like South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham support. With a new study showing that undocumented mothers account for a disproportionate number of births, even some Democrats might find it hard to stand opposed to altering the citizenship clause.

A simple reform would drain some scalding steam from immigration arguments that may soon again be at a roiling boil. It would bring the interpretation of the 14th Amendment into conformity with what the authors of its text intended, and with common sense, thereby removing an incentive for illegal immigration.

To end the practice of "birthright citizenship," all that is required is to correct the misinterpretation of that amendment's first sentence: "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." From these words has flowed the practice of conferring citizenship on children born here to illegal immigrants.

In his July 15 column "Immigration debacle," Tim Rutten uses Americans' natural reluctance to deport illegal immigrant parents of U.S.-born children as a weapon to attack efforts at immigration enforcement. Nothing new there. In his dissent to the majority ruling in United States vs. Wong Kim Ark -- the 1898 Supreme Court decision affirming that birth in the United States automatically confers citizenship -- Chief Justice Melville Fuller foresaw how this "birthright" would hinder enforcement of immigration law:

"[C]an the persons expelled be subjected to 'cruel and unusual punishments' in the process of expulsion, as would be the case if children born to them in this country were separated from them on their departure, because citizens of the United States?"

A majority of Hispanic children are now U.S.-born children of immigrants, primarily Mexicans who came to this country in an immigration wave that began about 1980, according to a report released yesterday.

The analysis of census data by the nonpartisan, Washington-based Pew Hispanic Center charts a substantial demographic shift among the nation's 16 million Hispanic children, who constitute one of the fastest growing child populations in the United States and account for more than one of five U.S. children. As recently as 1980, nearly six of 10 Latino children were in the third generation or higher, meaning that their parents, and often their grandparents and great-grandparents, were native-born U.S. citizens. Only three of 10 were in the second generation -- born in the United States to parents who immigrated.