‘Ending birthright citizenship’: Trump under fire for allegedly attempting to override the 14th Amendment
As Donald Trump prepares to once again take the White House, anger about his plans to end birthright citizenship is boiling over.
Among the accusations of vote rigging and strong statements by Democratic politicians about the incoming president’s moral character and legal issues, there are also plenty of contentious upcoming policy changes that have been discussed by Trump and his team. Birthright citizenship is one of the most controversial of these.
As per the American Immigration Council, birthright citizenship is a legal principle that automatically gives American citizenship to two types of people: those with ancestral ties to the country, and those born on its soil. The latter form, known as jus soli, or “right of the soil,” is what’s under fire from team Trump.
Birthright citizenship is enshrined by the Fourteenth Amendment to the constitution, which is widely known as the amendment that gave rights to former slaves after emancipation. The amendment refers to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States … are citizens of the United States and of the State wherin they reside.” This effectively means that anyone born on American soil has all of the same rights as any other citizen, a definition confirmed by the 1898 Supreme Court case of United States v Wong Kim Ark.
Birthright citizenship has become a hot button topic among Republicans, who believe that it is often abused by immigrants (both legal and illegal) who want to ensure their children have the privileges that come along with being a U.S citizen.
It has been widely reported that Trump is set to pass a number of executive orders during his first days in office, including many related to immigration. The most prominent of these would be a reinterpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment so as to exclude the children of migrants who are in the country illegally. The incoming administration would do this by not issuing passports or social security numbers to children born to those who are not in the U.S legally.
Plenty of legal commenters and social media users have attacked Trump and his team for this flagrant abuse of his powers.
While there’s no doubt Trump will sign this order, there is plenty of evidence to suggest it will be the subject of a long and drawn out legal battle that, under normal circumstances, the president is likely to lose. Speaking to NBC, history professor Susan J. Pearson explained that amendments to the constitution simply cannot be overturned by executive order. This is because it was amended to the constitution via the Supreme Court, and is therefore protected from the other two legislative branches of the U.S government.
This, however, assumes that everything is operating as it normally would. Trump, his team, and his supporters haver shown a massive disregard for the rule of law over the past decade, and it is likely that he will encourage those tasked with enforcing his executive order to do so despite the illegality of it.
Even if the system of checks and balances that have failed to contain Trump’s runaway train of illegality, sleeze, and corruption suddenly does start to work, there is an increasing body of evidence that shows the integrity of the Supreme Court is heavily comprimised. So, the idea of birthright citizenship may end up being dismantled through the proper legal channels. That, however, will at least take some time.
As it stands, Trump will sign the order, and the supposed lovers of law and order that make up the MAGA movement will uncritically accept it as a greater good, despite the fact it would spit in the face of decades of legal precedent. But consistency, or a desire for fairness, has never really been a factor in their thinking.
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