What is it and can Trump stop it? : NPR

President Donald Trump is trying to end the right to citizenship, the legal principle enshrined in the Constitution that automatically makes anyone born in the United States or its territories a citizen.

It’s a move Trump first proposed during his first term and one that most legal experts agree he cannot make unilaterally.

Indeed, days after signing his executive order Monday, the Trump administration was hit with at least four separate lawsuits from opposing coalitions, including nearly two dozen state attorneys general, a group of pregnant mothers and immigrant rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

“Natural citizenship is guaranteed in our Constitution and is absolutely central to what America stands for,” said senior attorney Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrant Rights Project. “Denying citizenship to babies born on American soil is illegal, deeply cruel and contrary to our values ​​as a country.”

Asked about legal challenges to the birthright citizenship order – which were widely expected – Trump acknowledged in signing it that it could be challenged, but said: “We think we have good reason” ‘move forward.

“We are the only country in the world doing this” with legal citizenship, he said.

This is not true: Dozens of countriesincluding Canada, Mexico and many South American countries, offer birthright citizenship.

Here’s what you need to know about it and what it would mean for the United States to end it — or at least try.

What does the Constitution say?

Section 1 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution states that “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.”

The amendment, ratified in 1868, sought to extend citizenship to former slaves after the Civil War.

“When birthright was created by the 14th Amendment, there were no illegal immigrants in the United States like there are today,” said Julia Gelatt, associate director of the American Policy Program immigration policy at the Migration Policy Institute, on NPR in December.

But it has been applied to immigration for more than a century, since the Supreme Court’s landmark 1898 decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark.

How has the clause been interpreted?

“For more than a century, since a young Chinese-American cook from San Francisco named Wong Kim Ark won his Supreme Court case, the right to citizenship for all – including babies born to immigrants – has been the cornerstone of American democracy,” said Aarti Kohli. , executive director of the Asian Law Caucus.

Wong, born in San Francisco to Chinese parents, was barred from entering the United States – under the Chinese Exclusion Act – when he returned from a trip abroad in 1890.

In a 6-2 decision, the court ruled that because Wong was born in the United States and his parents were not “employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China,” the 14th Amendment made him an American citizen.

“The case clarified that anyone born in the United States was a citizen under the Court’s interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, regardless of the parent’s immigration status, and the case has stood as precedent for over 125 years,” according to the American Immigration Council. .

This decision established the parameters of solid juiceor citizenship based on place of birth (as opposed to the birthright form of citizenship, known as Sanguinis juice).

And the Supreme Court has reaffirmed it over the years – including in the 1982 case. Plyler v. Doe, which held that states cannot deny students a free public education based on their immigration status.

What exactly does Trump want to change?

Trump’s executive order asserts that children born to parents without legal status in the United States are not subject to U.S. jurisdiction and therefore are not entitled to U.S. citizenship.

The order also extends to children born to parents with temporary legal status in the United States, such as foreign students or tourists.

Trump, who campaigned on fighting immigration, is not the first politician to call for the revocation of the birthright.

“Since 1991, Congress has introduced bills to end the right to citizenship,” Gelatt said. “None of these measures have been adopted.”

Can birthright citizenship be revoked?

“Revoking this right would require an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, or for the U.S. Supreme Court to depart from centuries of established precedent and legal principles that date back to before the founding of this country,” according to the American Immigration Council.

Congress could pass a new constitutional amendment, but that would require a two-thirds vote in the House and Senate and ratification by three-quarters of the states.

As NPR has reported, a small but vocal group of conservative legal scholars has argued for years that the 14th Amendment has long been misinterpreted and was not originally intended to grant citizenship to visitors’ children. (During his first administration, Trump took steps aimed at cracking down on what he called “birth tourism.”)

“One problem, they say, is that the courts have misinterpreted what the authors of the 14th Amendment meant by the phrase ‘subject to their jurisdiction’ and that the framers of the amendment understood that children of aliens illegals, like their parents, owed their loyalty to a nation that was not the United States,” explains the National Constitution Center.

Some also believe that Wong Ark Kim The ruling was limited because his parents were legally in the United States at the time of his birth.

But most lawyers do not believe that birthright can be revoked – much less by decree.

“This case will go to trial immediately and its chances of surviving these legal fights are slim, even before a Supreme Court filled with conservative justices and Trump appointees,” writes Thomas Wolf, director of democracy initiatives at the Brennan Center for Justice.

How many people would be affected?

The Pew Research Center estimates that 1.3 million adults born in the United States are children of immigrants without legal status, according to 2022 data.

The number of babies born in the United States to immigrants who entered the country illegally has declined in recent years: it was about 250,000 in 2016, a significant drop from the peak of about 390,000 in 2007. according to Pew.

But, as NPR reported, immigrant rights advocates fear Trump’s order could affect multiple generations of children.

“As children born to illegal immigrants were themselves treated as illegal immigrants, this would increase the illegal immigrant population in the country,” said Gelatt, of the Migration Policy Institute. “And we could see even the grandchildren of today’s illegal immigrants being born without U.S. citizenship.”

The data of Migration Policy Institute suggests that by 2050, there would be 4.7 million U.S.-born illegal immigrants – 1 million of whom would have two U.S.-born parents.

“What we see in countries where there is no birthright citizenship is that, you know, there are multigenerational groups of people who are not full members,” Gelatt said . “They don’t have a full say in the governments that govern them. And in some cases, people can also end up becoming stateless.”

Beyond the individual impact, Gelatt says the end of birthright could have repercussions for American society as a whole.

“We know that when people have legal status and the right to work legally in the United States and be full members of the country, it helps them integrate, prosper and contribute more to our country, to our economy and our democracy.”