Birthright Citizenship
Trump v. Barbara
https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/25-365.html
This is an effort by President Trump, using a Presidential decree, to repeal part of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, a 127-year-old Supreme Court precedent, several federal statutes, and the citizenship rights of generations to come of immigrants to the United States. The essence of the presidential decree is that newborns in the US after the date of Trump’s presidential decree are not American citizens unless their parents are either US citizens or naturalized citizens or legal permanent residents. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/protecting-the-meaning-and-value-of-american-citizenship/
This would apply to about 250,000 infants born in the US each year, leaving these children stateless with no access to US citizenship and causing incalculable harm. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/news/repealing-birthright-citizenship-unintended-consequences
The 14th Amendment of the US Constitution was enacted after the Civil War in response to the efforts of Southern States to discriminate against newly emancipated African Americans. https://billofrightsinstitute.org/14th-amendment-what-is-the-fourteenth-amendment/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23021830255&gbraid=0AAAAAC2Yh3UAWXE5MEx4_AZXjAnkQuICL&gclid=Cj0KCQjwyr3OBhD0ARIsALlo-OmWCq-OXnOsQ2YtoH4t84u1jzgKzHQ9GLcPVS0FqeJcsCjRZv86TKoaAnZnEALw_wcB It is quite explicit “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.” In other words, it is quite specific; if you are born here, you are an American citizen. The federal citizenship statute puts even more meat on the bones of birthright citizenship. https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title8-section1401&num=0&edition=prelim
The 14th Amendment protects all American citizens and also all persons present in the US as follows: “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
In the late 19th Century and early 20th Century, there was a public outcry in California and other western states against Chinese immigrants who had built the nation’s rail lines in the West and against Japanese immigrants who helped build the levees and dams of California’s agricultural paradise. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/chinese-immigration and https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/japanese-exclusion-and-the-american-labor-movement-1900-to-1924/
In US v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) the Supreme Court upheld the rights of birthright citizenship for a Chinese man born in San Francisco to Chinese parents. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/169/649/ Wong Kim Ark, a young Chinese laborer made two trips to China; on his return from the second trip the US Customs officials sought to exclude him. The Court decided on a habeas corpus petition that he was entitled to return to the US. It based its decision on the language of the 14th Amendment and on long-standing English common-law decisions governing birthright citizenship.
Countries fall into two different philosophies with respect to citizenship: Jus Solis and Jus Sanguinis. Virtually all nations in the Western Hemisphere use “Jus Solis” (i.e. your citizenship is based on where you were born, birthright citizenship); whereas, many European and Asian countries decide citizenship based on “Jus Sanguinis” (the citizenship of your parental lineage — your blood lines). Thus, for example, an Irish-American living in Boston has a right of return to Ireland with full citizenship as long as their parents or grandparents are Irish. https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/moving-country/irish-citizenship/your-right-to-irish-citizenship/
In a diverse country of immigrants from all over the world with extensive intermarriage(such as the US) a nation populated with many newer generation immigrants and many descended from long-ago immigrants, the birthright citizenship decisions made by the drafters of the 14th Amendment and by the authors of the Supreme Court decisions make enormous practical as well as legal sense. In a small homogeneous nation like Ireland, Norway, Iceland or Switzerland, the Jus Sanguinis policy may be more fitting. The US actually uses a combination of the two, so that if you are a US citizen giving birth in a foreign nation, your child is a US citizen. If you are a foreign national giving birth in the US, your child is a US citizen, with limited exceptions for the births of foreign diplomats or invading troops.
The Supreme Court has been protective of immigrants when government seeks to strip them of their rights for political purposes. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/stripping-naturalized-americans-citizenship-faces-high-legal-hurdles Eugenics crusaders, Steven Miller and Donald Trump, have been two peas in a pod in their efforts to dispossess US citizenship rights and naturalization opportunities for immigrants of darker complexions. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/trump-2-immigration-1st-year https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/stephen-millers-rise-to-prominence-and-influence-on-the-trump-administration The one group of would be immigrants that has found favor with Trump and Miller are white Afrikaners whom they believe will share their own racist political perspectives and predilections. https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/carr-ryan/our-work/carr-ryan-commentary/afrikaner-exception-race-and-strategic-dismantling
It is now up to the nine justices of the Supreme Court to decide whether to rewrite the US Constitution at Trump’s behest; they were skeptical during oral argument while the President looked on. https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/04/supreme-court-appears-likely-to-side-against-trump-on-birthright-citizenship/ It could be 8-1 or 7-2 as only Justice Clarence Thomas appeared to be wholeheartedly buying the President’s executive order to end birthright citizenship; we will have to wait and see, hopefully a decision in June. https://newrepublic.com/post/208549/amy-coney-barrett-supreme-court-donald-trump-birthright-citizenship
For your further reading pleasure: the Cato Institute has published a series of particularly well-documented studies on the benefits of immigration to Americans. https://www.cato.org/immigration