Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Fearmongering Ignores Facts
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Trump’s plan to end birthright citizenship is inane.
…it makes absolutely no sense on legal, constitutional or economic grounds. Birthright citizenship is a constitutional right that has provided immense benefits to the United States for over a century.
But Trump’s proposal is nonetheless highly revealing because it demonstrates the extent to which Republicans have become a party driven by fear rather than facts.
The biggest stumbling block to Trump’s proposal is the plain language of the 14th Amendment: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”
Trump’s argument rests on the words “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” He thinks that clause excludes children of foreign nationals from birthright citizenship.
But Trump is wrong. As constitutional scholars have explained, the amendment’s drafters only intended for the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” to exclude from automatic citizenship the children of foreign diplomats and Native American children born on sovereign reservation land.
The Supreme Court made this point clear in two late 19th-century cases, including the 1898 case of US v Wong Kim Ark. As the court noted, foreign ambassadors hold diplomatic immunity under international law. Accordingly, diplomats and their children are not “subject to” American jurisdiction. But the court emphasized that all other children of foreign parents born on American soil receive automatic birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment.
Moreover, Congress later extended automatic US citizenship to all Native American children, including those born on reservations.
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