Ramesh: I think this is one of those things where the framers would be
utterly baffled to hear us speaking of their Amendment in the context
we’re.. speaking of it in (sorry, my grammar fell over its feet there). The
USA in 1868 just wasn’t a magnet country for all the world’s poor, as it is
now–wasn’t thought to be a very important country at all, except perhaps in
potential; and was anyway largely empty, and with close-to-zero public
expenditure on welfare, health, education… If we could get them on The
Corner, the framers’d be scratching their heads and muttering: “Well, heck,
we never thought of that…” They were only Congresscritters, after all.