Birthright Citizenship

In one of President Trump’s first Executive Orders, he signed an order titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship”.

Essentially, this order removed automatic citizenship for those born in the United States to illegal immigrant parents. The order seeks to clarify the 14th amendment which has become the mechanism for allowing what is referred to as an anchor baby.

Prior to this executive order, if a woman entered the country illegally and gave birth, her child was automatically granted U.S. citizenship.

Many believe this is an abuse of the 14th amendment and not what was originally intended.

In 1857, the supreme court ruled that Black descendants of enslaved people could not be US citizens. To right this injustice, just over a decade later, the US ratified the 14th amendment along with the 13th and 15th amendments. These were known as the Reconstruction Amendments which ended slavery, gave the right to vote to former male slaves, and the 14th amendment granted citizenship to the descendants of former slaves.

The first line of the 14th amendment reads: “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 key phrase in the 14th amendment is “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” which many scholars believe indicates someone who is in the United States legally, because if someone is here illegally that are not “subject to the jurisdiction thereof”. The 14th amendment allows for children of immigrants of legal status to have birthright citizenship, but would exclude children born to those in the U.S. illegally.

Following Trump’s signing of the Executive Order, there have been many false reports on social media claiming that people like Usha Vance, the wife to Vice President Vance will now be deported. That is false. While Usha Vance’s parents are legal immigrants, even if they were not, the Executive Order only applies to those born on or after February 20, 2025.

If a woman is a legal immigrant and gives birth to a child in the U.S., that child is a U.S. citizen by birth and this order does not apply, which is exactly the scenario in Usha Vance’s case.

Those in favor of birthright citizenship often cite the court case of Wong Kim Ark. Ark was a young man born in San Francisco to immigrant parents but travelled to China to see his family. When he tried to return home to the US, he wasn’t allowed into the country based on allegations that he wasn’t a US citizen.

The case went to the Supreme Court and in 1898 the justices ruled in favor of Wong Kim Ark’s US citizenship claim even though his parents were Chinese immigrants unable to naturalize.

The difference here however is glaring, Wong Kim Ark’s parents were legal immigrants.

In addition to the U.S., only 28 countries out of 195 allow for birthright citizenship. And of those 28, most require at least one parent is a citizen of that country. However in the U.S., that has not been the case prior to this Executive Order.

It seems President Trump is right, the U.S. really is in the minority when it comes to automatic birthright citizenship.

I’m Ike Wingate and this has been The Ike Report