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“President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to end automatic citizenship for anyone born in the US, starting on his first day back in office next month. ‘We have to end it. It's ridiculous,’ he told NBC's Meet the Press in his first broadcast network interview since winning November's election.” BBC
The Fourteenth Amendment states, “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.” US Congress
The left argues that attempts to end birthright citizenship would be unconstitutional and wrong.
“[In 1897] US District Attorney Henry S. Foote made the case that Kim Ark had become a citizen by ‘accident of birth’ and his ‘education and political affiliations remained entirely alien to the United States.’ Because Wong’s parents were ineligible for naturalization and ‘subjects of the Emperor of China,’ the argument went, Kim Ark himself was ‘by reason of his race, language, color and dress, a Chinese person.’…
“A district court judge disagreed, finding that ‘it is enough that he was born here, whatever was the status of his parents’ and that a ruling against Kim Ark, would have resulted in countless people ‘denationalized and remanded to a state of alienage.’ The government appealed and the case went before the Supreme Court. Delivering a 6–2 decision in March 1898, the justices determined that Kim Ark was indeed a citizen.”
Isabela Dias, Mother Jones
“One former Trump administration official has proposed a federal statute stating that children of non-citizens are not ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the US. That language would remove them from the protection of the 14th Amendment’s Birthright Clause…
“[This] would open the door to numerous other problems. Being subject to the jurisdiction of the US means that a person can be brought into court for violating its laws. Placing someone outside the jurisdiction of the US is a privilege we bestow on diplomats to protect them from courts. Immigration hawks would not want to put the children of non-citizens beyond the reach of the judicial system.”
Barbara L McQuade, Bloomberg
“Even if [it] doesn’t happen, raising the question of birthright citizenship right off the bat could benefit Trump strategically in two ways. First, challenging this right might make it more politically palatable to separate the estimated 4.3 million U.S. citizens whose parents are undocumented from their soon-to-be-deported family members…
“[Second] Perhaps they believe that once eliminating birthright citizenship is on the table, their more legally defensible plans will seem less draconian.”
Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine
“A triumph over racism and xenophobia, the 14th Amendment also marked the beginning of a global movement to embrace birthright citizenship, rather than determining citizenship by ethnicity or national origin. Despite Mr. Trump’s repeated assertions that the United States is the ‘only’ country with birthright citizenship, dozens of nations have followed America’s example, including almost all countries in the Western Hemisphere…
“This is the history Mr. Trump seeks to undo via executive fiat. Doing so might please anti-immigrant groups that have long argued that birthright citizenship creates a perverse incentive for immigrants or visitors to have children in the United States…
“It’s true that some people have exploited the law, but having citizen children does not protect undocumented immigrant parents from deportation. Children cannot sponsor their parents until they are 21, and they must be able to support them financially. Concerns about these rare instances do not justify throwing out birthright citizenship.”
Editorial Board, Washington Post
The right is generally skeptical of birthright citizenship but divided about whether it can be ended through executive action.
The right is generally skeptical of birthright citizenship but divided about whether it can be ended through executive action.
“‘Birthright citizenship’ may sound benign, but thanks to an overreaching Supreme Court decision 126 years ago, it’s the biggest legal hole in our border… When the Supreme Court handed down its United States v. Wong Kim Ark decision in 1898, illegal immigration was nothing like the crisis it is now. And the subject of that case, Wong Kim Ark, was the son of legal immigrants — permanent residents, in fact…
“The dissenting justices 126 years ago looked to the Civil Rights Act of 1866 — passed just two months before Congress took up the 14th Amendment — to explain what the amendment meant… Pointing to the statute’s language, they argued that ‘subject to the jurisdiction of the United States’ meant, among other things, ‘not subject to any foreign power.’ That was how Congress viewed birthright citizenship then — and it’s a common-sense interpretation that would exclude illegal aliens and birth tourists today.”
Daniel McCarthy, New York Post
“While the citizenship clause eliminated race-based barriers to birthright citizenship, its framers and ratifiers manifestly intended that its language restrict birthright citizenship based on the strength of a person’s relationship to the United States and the lack of a relationship with another nation…
“Notably, even modern advocates of universal birthright citizenship agree that at least some individuals were (and still are) excluded from citizenship because they owed only a qualified allegiance, despite having been born ‘in the United States.’… Few people seriously argue that the citizenship clause applies to Native Americans who are born subject to the jurisdiction of their tribal governments…
“In fact, the Supreme Court confirmed that in 1884 in Elk v. Wilkins when it denied citizenship to an American Indian because he ‘owed immediate allegiance to’ his tribe and not the United States. The U.S. citizenship of American Indians comes not through the 14th Amendment, but through the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. There would have been no need for this law if the 14th Amendment extended citizenship on all individuals born in America.”
Amy Swearer, Daily Signal
Dated but Relevant: “I believe President Trump is right on birthright citizenship — the 14th Amendment does not require it. I do not believe, however, that the president may change the interpretation of the 14th Amendment, which has been in effect for decades, by executive order… I believe such a change must be done by statute to have any hope of surviving court-scrutiny.”
Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review
“Ending birthright citizenship would almost certainly be at cross-purposes with [Trump’s] larger goal. Children who automatically become citizens would be counted going forward as illegal, like their parents, and the size of the illegal population would swell by the millions. There’s also a moral case for leaving birthright citizenship in place, including for the offspring of undocumented parents, and it’s similar to the case that Mr. Trump has made for accommodating the Dreamers. Why punish children for the sins of their parents?”
Jason L. Riley, Wall Street Journal
