That doesn't prove anything! The entire article is paranoid mumbo-jumbo, knitpicking at the fact that it specifically says "affordability credits."
As I have said repeatedly, as many others have said, as fact-checkers have said, they
will not get health care under this bill. Will not. Won't. Not at all. No way. None. The fact that you're trying to stretch some decades old court-case about children and public education into allowing illegals to have health care obviously shows the fact that you know you're making a huge leap of logic here.
The Fourteenth Amendment provides that
[n]o State shall . . . deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
(Emphasis added.) Appellants argue at the outset that undocumented aliens, because of their immigration status, are not "persons within the jurisdiction" of the State of Texas, and that they therefore have no right to the equal protection of Texas law. We reject this argument. Whatever his status under the immigration laws, an alien is surely a "person" in any ordinary sense of that term. Aliens, even aliens whose presence in this country is unlawful, have long been recognized as "persons" guaranteed due process of law by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Shaughnessv v. Mezei, 345 U.S. 206, 212 (1953); Wong Wing v. United States, 163 U.S. 228, 238 (1896); Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 369 (1886). Indeed, we have clearly held that the Fifth Amendment protects aliens whose presence in this country is unlawful from invidious discrimination by the Federal Government. Mathews v. Diaz, 426 U.S. 67, 77 (1976). [n9] [p211]
Appellants seek to distinguish our prior cases, emphasizing that the Equal Protection Clause directs a State to afford its protection to persons within its jurisdiction, while the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments contain no such assertedly limiting phrase. In appellants' view, persons who have entered the United States illegally are not "within the jurisdiction" of a State even if they are present within a State's boundaries and subject to its laws. Neither our cases nor the logic of the Fourteenth Amendment support that constricting construction of the phrase "within its jurisdiction." [n10] We have never suggested that the class of persons who might avail themselves of the equal protection guarantee is less than coextensive with that entitled to due process. To the contrary, we have recognized [p212] that both provisions were fashioned to protect an identical class of persons, and to reach every exercise of state authority.
The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution is not confined to the protection of citizens. It says:
Nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
These provisions are universal in their application, to all persons within the territorial jurisdiction, without regard to any differences of race, of color, or of nationality, and the protection of the laws is a pledge of the protection of equal laws.
Plyler v. Doe.
Illegal aliens will get health care benefits under a public option.
One would imagine that the editor of the Harvard Law Review, and lecturer in Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago would know this.
I don't know why I'm doing this, but here goes.
Plyler v. Doe has nothing to do with health care, so right off the bat we're wandering into random and totally irrelevant territory. What you conveniently leave out in your copy and paste fest here is that this court case is restricted to public education. The court found in Plyler v. Doe that the states can't restrict public education on the basis of immigration status because of the 14th amendment, but the decision went on to mark that education is different than other forms of government benefits.
There are various other parts of this case as well where they make the distinction on two fronts. One, that it deals with education and that education is one of the most important functions of government and tools for future success, and Two, that these are
children who did nothing wrong and don't deserve to be punished.
Further, what's the most amusing here is that what you pasted isn't really relevant at all because it's mostly just a
summary of one of the oral arguments, not what the court found in the end. The court
made the distinction between government benefits and education, and agreed that, in many cases (such as
De Canas v. Bica) the state does have the authority to block certain opportunities to illegal immigrants.
(Such as when the state law mirrors federal law, which this case didn't. Another important distinction that you leave out!)Your problem here is that you're only reading half the 14th Amendment and half the interpretation, reading it as "everyone is entitled to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and gets the same laws" rather than "no one shall be deprived life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness
without due process of law." The court found in this case that it wasn't fairly applied and that the situation was different, not because it followed the incredibly broad definition of the 14th Amendment that you've set up.
There is no way you can make the connection to health care from this case, literally none, you have no earthly clue what you're talking about.
And of course, there's this little gem:
The dirty little secret is that they contribute greatly to our society (though of course they have their downsides) while not being able to receive their due. Illegal or legal, they do largely pay their fair share and deserve certain public services, and most, if not all, public services are not available to them because of their immigration status.
It would be
better to offer them health insurance under this reform plan. It would be cheaper, and keep them from abusing emergency room services, which is vastly more expensive than normal sustained care. If they can pay for it, I don't see any reason why we should restrict them.
But even so, it's not in the bill. In no way will it be allowed under the current reform plan. And the court case you cited is so completely irrelevant I shouldn't have even had to address it.
