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Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution Ranking Member Peter Welch of Vermont says opening an afternoon hearing on birthright citizenship for illegal aliens and tourists the nation was built on immigrants but also on slave labor and that the Dred Scott decision's denial of citizenship to African Americans was finally corrected by the 14th Amendment establishing birthright citizenship, and he argued that while the legal question of whether citizenship was conferred by birth was clearly answered in the affirmative by most scholars and by his own reading of the law, real citizenship went beyond legal status to embracing the responsibility every American had to promote the ideal that every person was created equal and had an opportunity to contribute to a more perfect union.