Donald Trump kicked off his second term as US President with lots of significant executive orders and actions that aimed at illegal immigrants and birthright citizenship and set his agendas for his term in which he has promised to ‘make America great again.’
President Trump stamped an order seeking to end automatic birthright citizenship for children of people not in the country legally, as well as those living legally but on a temporary basis, such as tourists, students, and those on work visas.
“We’re the only country in the world that does this with birthright, as you know, and it’s just absolutely ridiculous,” Trump remarked in the Oval Office. “We think we have very good grounds” for the change, he further said.
While Donald Trump issued an order seeking to end birthright citizenship, it is not clear whether his order will overcome inescapable legal challenges, since birthright citizenship is incorporated in the US Constitution.
Birthright citizenship is a legal principle that naturally provides citizenship of a country to individuals at birth regardless of their parents’ nationality or immigration status. In simple terms, it means that any child born on the territory of a country naturally becomes a citizen of that country.
In the US, birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which states: “All persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”
The Donald Trump order, shared on the White House website, declared that the 14th Amendment has been misinterpreted in the past.
The White House order states that the Amendment does not naturally extend citizenship to everyone born in the US, especially those born to parents who are not citizens to U.S. jurisdiction.
The order said, “But the Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States. The Fourteenth Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
Consistent with this understanding, Congress has further specified through legislation that “a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” is a national and citizen of the United States at birth, 8 U.S.C. 1401, generally mirroring the Fourteenth Amendment’s text.”
The order points out that the Fourteenth Amendment, while granting citizenship to those born in the US, has always omitted certain categories of people, including children of foreign diplomats or those born to parents who are unlawfully in the country or temporarily in the US.
The order also cited the misinterpretation of the Constitution in a 1857 Supreme Court case, Dred Scott v. Sandford, which it says wrongly omitted people of African descent from US citizenship. In contrast, the order says that the proper interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment should restrict birthright citizenship in cases where the parents are not fully citizens to US jurisdiction.
According to the policy change, a child whose mother was unlawfully in the US and the father was not a US citizen or legal resident won’t naturally get US citizenship.
Further, if the “mother was in the US temporarily (like on a tourist or student visa) and the father wasn’t a US citizen or permanent resident, the child also won’t naturally get US citizenship.”
This change will apply only to children born in the US after 30 days from the date of the order, the White House release stated.
The order does not immediately end birthright citizenship in the US as it faces various legal challenges, since birthright citizenship is part of the US Constitution.
