WASHINGTON -- The economy, the deficit and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will all be before Congress when it returns to work this week.
Lawmakers from Georgia are positioning themselves to be smack dab in the middle of the contentious issue with legislation that would end automatically giving U.S. citizenship to all children born in this country, something guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. Opponents see it as a political maneuver.
"There is some very, very serious concern about this issue," said Republican U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey of Marietta, who supports the legislation. Immigration has become such a hot topic that if politicians don't take a stand, "they couldn't be elected dog catcher," he added.
A recent Gallup Inc. poll showed that immigration is one of the top issues on the minds of voters -- behind the economy, terrorism and federal spending but ahead of issues such as Afghanistan and the environment.
In the past decade, Georgia has become the No. 7 state in the country for illegal immigrants, with an estimated 475,000 living in the state, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research group.
Gingrey, who is uncontested in the November election, is helping lead the charge for changing the nation's "birthright citizenship" policy. After the Civil War, the 14th Amendment was created to guarantee citizenship to former slaves.
Gingrey is one of more than 90 House members -- including all seven of Georgia's Republican House members -- who are co-sponsors of the "Birthright Citizenship Act," a 2009 bill drafted by former U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal of Gainesville, a Republican who's now running for governor.
Democratic opponents to changing birthright citizenship laws say the current push is just an election-year ploy by Republicans. Given Congress' schedule for the rest of the year, it's highly unlikely it will take up the Deal legislation, they point out. The legislation has been in the House Judiciary Committee since April.
"This is a classic Republican campaign strategy -- divide and conquer and turn people against each other, but this time with a constitutional twist," said Democratic U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson of Lithonia.
Instead of going through the tough and controversial practice of altering the Constitution, the Birthright Citizenship Act seeks to change federal immigration laws to require that a child born in the United States also have at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen, a legal resident or "an alien performing active service in the armed forces" in order to be considered a citizen.
"The current governmental policy of granting birthright citizenship to the children of illegal aliens is an improper application of the 14th Amendment in its original intent," said Republican U.S. Rep. Paul Broun of Athens, another co-sponsor known as a strict constitutionalist.
In the Senate, meanwhile, several Republican leaders -- including GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina -- have suggested the 14th Amendment is outdated and should possibly be repealed. Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss also has said he thinks the law should be reviewed.
And last week, Republican U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson waded into the fray as well, saying he would support legislation that would allow only U.S.-born individuals whose parents were legally in the United States to be citizens.
Isakson's Democratic challenger, Georgia Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond, said he disagrees, echoing complaints from other opponents who say changing immigration laws to circumvent the 14th Amendment could be unconstitutional.
"Congress has no authority to enact laws that restrict the effect of birth on the right to American citizenship," Thurmond said.
The current U.S. policy on birthright citizenship is relatively unique. Most other countries do not offer automatic citizenship to everyone born within their borders, according to a report by the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonprofit research group that advocates tighter immigration controls. Many countries that once did have repealed those policies in recent decades, according to the report.
A CBS News poll last month showed that the American public is almost evenly divided on the issue of birthright citizenship, with 49 percent saying they favor keeping federal law as it is and 47 percent saying it needs changing. The poll was conducted among a random sample of 1,082 adults nationwide.
Proponents say changing birthright laws would reduce the drag of illegal immigration on the economy by reducing the number of illegal workers coming to the country.
"It's about the cost of supporting these folks," Gingrey said, "and it's about the cost of illegal immigrants potentially taking a job away from a legal immigrant or a citizen of the U.S. who is mired in poverty and out of work."
Changing birthright citizenship laws, proponents say, also would end the practice of illegal immigrants coming to the United States to have what they call "anchor babies" who are entitled to all the privileges of U.S. citizenship even if their parents aren't citizens.
An estimated 340,000 babies born in the United States in 2008 -- about 8 percent of newborns -- had at least one parent who was an illegal immigrant, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.
A study released last week by the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, however, indicates that eliminating birthright citizenship would actually do more harm than good, resulting in what it calls "the establishment of a permanent class of undocumented persons."
If the Birthright Citizenship Act is passed, the number of unauthorized immigrants nationwide would soar to as much as 24 million from 11 million by 2050, according to the research group, which says it is guided by the philosophy that international migration needs active and intelligent management. That's mainly because all U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants would become illegal, too. And if those illegal children stay in the United States and have their own children without marrying a legal citizen, their children would be illegal, too.
Opponents of amending the law say some of the arguments in favor of it are bogus, including the assertion that illegal immigrants can quickly claim citizenship by giving birth to their children in the United States. They note, for example, that federal law says U.S.-born children can’t petition the government to allow their immigrant parents to live permanently in the U.S. until those children turn 21.
"It's demagoguery. It's worse than foolishness," said Charles Kuck, an Atlanta area immigration attorney and past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
Democratic U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Atlanta said he doesn't disagree that the country needs to reform its immigration policies.
"But I don't want to come to the point when you say a child who is born in America is not a U.S. citizen," he said. "That is an idea that's foreign to us as a country."
Yet even some Democrats have come out in favor of changing traditional birthright citizenship policies.
"I'm just not convinced that the Constitution mandates birthright citizenship for folks who are illegally in this country," said Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall of Macon. "The idea that we could pass a statute ... to make it more clear that the Constitution doesn’t require this makes sense to me."
Immigration has become a key issue in the race for Marshall's 8th Congressional District seat. Last week, the four-term Democrat launched a television ad campaign accusing his Republican opponent of being soft on immigration.
Challenger Austin Scott denies the claims and says he supports the Birthright Citizenship Act drafted by Deal during his time as a congressman.
Others say the problem isn't about birthrights, but about immigration and border policies as a whole.
"If Congress would act to secure all our borders and rationally deal with the millions of undocumented immigrants in the country already -- the real problem -- this would not be a discussion," said Liz Carter, a Republican who's challenging Johnson for Georgia's 4th Congressional District.
Gingrey and other proponents of changing birthright citizenship laws don't disagree.
They see the birthright legislation as a steppingstone toward broader immigration reform. Gingrey also has authored a pending bill called the "Nuclear Family Priority Act" that would limit the number of visas a legal immigrant could obtain for family members.
"Immigration policy today," Gingrey said, "has run amok."