#birthright citizenship
President Trump has announced that he plans an executive order that would remove the right to citizenship for babies of noncitizens and unauthorized immigrants born on U.S. soil.
The 14th Amendment became part of the U.S. Constitution 150 years ago in July of 1868. Among other things, it enshrined our traditional common law practice of granting citizenship to those born in the United States who are subject to its laws-specifically it guaranteed that the recently freed slaves and their descendants would be citizens. The 14th Amendment also applied to the children of immigrants, as its authors and opponents understood at the time.
Released earlier this year, President Trump’s immigration position paper, however, famously endorsed an end to birthright citizenship. Michael Anton, a former national security official in the Trump administration as well as a lecturer and researcher at Hillsdale College, has argued that President Trump should use his pen and his phone to exclude the children born here to noncitizens, with little thought of what would happen were such a policy enacted.
Taking Anton’s advice would do grievous harm to our country, destroy one of the finest legacies of the Republican Party, and overturn centuries of Anglo-American common law in exchange for a citizenship system that would slow assimilation.
In addition to being constitutionally questionable, such an order would harm all Americans, not just the children or grandchildren of noncitizens.
Birthright citizenship is good for the United States. It guarantees that everyone who is born in America believes that they are Americans, which is the single best policy for promoting assimilation.
