One of Donald Trump’s campaign promises in 2024 was to revoke birthright citizenship on day one. He is trying, but hasn’t succeeded yet.
Birthright citizenship is a
legal principle granting automatic citizenship to anyone born within a
country’s borders, regardless of their parents’ nationality or immigration
status. The USA is one of about
33 countries that offer this right. Canada is one of them. Here is the full
list:
Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina,
Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica,
Ecuador, El Salvador, Gambia, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica,
Lesotho, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saint Kitts and Nevis,
Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu,
United States, Uruguay, Venezuela.
This principle has been in
effect since the 24th amendment was ratified in 1868. The
first sentence reads “All
persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the
jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State
wherein they reside.”
The interpretation of the 14th Amendment was
challenged in 1898 in the case of Wong Kim Ark. Ark was born in the US to Chinese
parents who then returned to China where he grew up and married. He later
returned to the US to live and on returning from a trip to China was denied
entry. The case made it to the Supreme Court where his citizenship was
confirmed, thus upholding the 14th Amendment.
One of the 23 executive orders signed on Trump’s first day of his second presidency was to end birthright citizenship. This was immediately blocked by District Court Judge John Coughenour with a temporary restraining order. The judge remarked that in four decades on the bench he couldn’t remember a case “… where the question presented was this clear. This is a blatantly unconstitutional order. Where were the lawyers when this decision was being made?”
An Executive Order is a directive to federal employees from
the executive branch. They cannot create or change laws, spend or not spend
money, and certainly not change the Constitution. Only Congress can do the
first two and the third is much more difficult to accomplish. Trump is trying
to do all three and then complains when the courts are pushing back at his
illegal and in this case unconstitutional acts.
Fears that Trump would start deporting citizens next has already happened. On Friday April 25 ICE deported 3 American citizens ages 2, 4 and 7 along with their undocumented mothers. One of the children was being treated for stage 4 cancer.
Heather Cox Richardson in
her April 26 substack post quoted Ronald Reagan who in his last speech as
president recalled what someone had written to him:
“You can go to live in France,
but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or
Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from
any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.
“We lead the world because,
unique among nations, we draw our people—our strength—from every country and
every corner of the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our
nation. While other countries cling to the stale past, here in America we
breathe life into dreams. We create the future, and the world follows us into
tomorrow.
“Thanks to each wave of new
arrivals to this land of opportunity, we're a nation forever young, forever
bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always
leading the world to the next frontier. This quality is vital to our future as
a nation. If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the
world would soon be lost.”
The Republican party under
Donald Trump has replaced this vision of leadership and growth with a regime of
hate for, and persecution of, immigrants. Under Trump American leadership has
been thrown away.
Sources;
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