Washington, DC — During a recent interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker, Donald Trump reiterated his intention to “eliminate birthright citizenship,” the protection enshrined in the 14th Amendment that guarantees citizenship to children born on U.S. soil regardless. Asked about the likelihood that doing so unilaterally would face legal opposition, Trump said he would consider amending the Constitution.” The New York Times also recently reported that the Trump team plans to gut the 14th amendment would not just be done through the courts, but by stopping “issuing citizenship-affirming documents, like passports and Social Security cards, to infants born on domestic soil,” implying this would only apply to children born to suspected undocumented migrant parents.
Below are 5 key things to know about birthright citizenship:
- It represents hard-won progress after the Civil War and moved America closer to realizing its founding principles that all people are created equal. The 14th Amendment, which includes birthright citizenship, was part of the post-Civil War Reconstruction amendments to the Constitution. As the Washington Post wrote in a recent editorial: “Ratified in 1868 to solidify the political transformations for which hundreds of thousands of Union soldiers had given their lives, the amendment refuted the belief that a person’s race or ethnicity should determine citizenship. Its authors intended to undo the Supreme Court’s shameful Dred Scott decision, which held that no person of African ancestry could ever claim U.S. citizenship. It offers a clear, simple standard for determining who is an American, by which the color of one’s skin and their ancestry are irrelevant.” It’s part of what makes America America. See more at this NPR deep-dive here and via the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History here.
- It is settled law, with 150 years of precedent. Those pushing to repeal or overturn birthright citizenship and gut the 14th Amendment want to ignore 150 years of precedent and bring us back to the shameful Dred Scott era. As conservative legal scholar John Yoo wrote in “Settled Law: Birthright Citizenship and the 14th Amendment” for the center-right American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in 2018: “Conservatives should reject Trump’s nativist siren song and reaffirm the law and policy of one of the Republican Party’s greatest achievements … The 14th Amendment settled the question of birthright citizenship. Conservatives should not be the ones seeking a new law or even a constitutional amendment to reverse centuries of American tradition.” Also read the analysis from America’s Voice legal advisor David Leopold, “Trump’s Plan to Gut the 14th Amendment and Redefine Citizenship”
- Think of the practical implications – more big government meddling, bureaucracy, and chaos from a lack of documentation. Efforts to root out births to undocumented parents will undoubtedly mean more big government intrusion into people’s lives and bureaucratic meddling and investigating of newborns and hospitals. There are practical implications to issuing fewer birth certificates and Social Security numbers and the chaos that such procedures would bring to numerous every day interactions. Will paternity tests and a formal immigration status investigation be required of all parents of US births to establish citizenship? And what will be the consequences of having many more “stateless people?” These are just a few of the practical considerations wrought by a repealed birthright citizenship provision. Read more at this Center for American Progress fact sheet here.
- It’s a push from some of the same ringleaders of the post-2020 “Stop the Steal” effort that led to January 6th. A recent Talking Points Memo investigation noted, “Several of those who, before Trump took office, pushed fringe interpretations of that history in an effort to end birthright citizenship also worked on the legal elements of his 2020 coup attempt. John Eastman, the attorney who pushed to have Mike Pence reject electoral votes in January 2021, has been a proponent of the move for decades. Ken Chesebro, seen as the architect of the fake electors scheme, co-wrote a Supreme Court brief with Eastman in May 2016 that dismissed birthright citizenship as a ‘vestige of feudalism.’” Those who question the legitimacy of our democracy when their candidate loses are also clearly entwined in the effort to deny citizenship to certain American children.
- It’s part of a sweeping nativist agenda that would move America backwards. The birthright citizenship repeal push is part of a sweeping and radical blueprint Stephen Miller and other nativists are teeing up that would move America in the wrong direction. From mass deportations to denaturalization to the forced removal of mixed status families to the stripping of legal protections for Dreamers with DACA and TPS holders, the birthright citizenship repeal effort is part of a bigger agenda that goes beyond the narrow lens of immigration to the fundamental question of who gets to be an American.
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