The Trump-friendly Supreme Court may be poised to strip citizenship from countless immigrants who think they have it. Last week, the Supreme Court announced that it will hear a case regarding birthright citizenship. Before this term is out next spring, the court will decide whether the 14th Amendment grants automatic citizenship to anyone born in U.S. territory.
Uncounted millions have been blessed with birthright citizenship. Proponents say it is enshrined in the 14th Amendment. Opponents say maybe not.
The 14th Amendment was passed in direct response to the worst Supreme Court decision ever, Dred Scott vs Sandford (1857). It held that Americans descended from African slaves could not be citizens. Even if a slave escaped, he or she was still subject to the laws of the slave state from which they escaped. Usually, that meant a return to abuse, cruelty, and death.
To end this crime against humanity and stain on the nation’s honor, in 1868, Congress passed the Civil War amendments to the Constitution. Here is the Citizenship Clause 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 and of the state where they reside.”
Unless they were foreign diplomats on assignment, it doesn’t even matter where your parents are from.
An 1898 Supreme Court case, United States vs Wong Kim Ark, expanded the idea. It held that technically, it doesn’t even matter whether your mother was in the United States legally when you were born. Location, location, location. Until now, that has been all that mattered, whether your parents were from Mexico, Somalia, Afghanistan, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Somalia, or the moon. Or if your parents had $1 billion or zero.
Still, nothing is forever. It will be argued forcefully in the coming months that the children of undocumented immigrants are not really “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States as the amendment requires.
Also bound to be raised is the argument that the Amendment was written to protect the rights of former slaves and their descendants, not undocumented immigrants from Latin America or elsewhere.
Birth-tourism will undoubtedly be more heavily scrutinized in the lead-up to oral arguments in the big birthright case, as the Trump Administration tries to expose its abuses.
Outrageous examples of birthright exploitation will be exposed. And those cases get extreme.
One widely followed Long Island case a few years ago concerned a ring providing support services and hospitality to Turkish women who wanted to have American citizen babies. The U.S.-based thieves, who have since been found guilty also arranged to pay for the births through Medicaid fraud.
When they were still getting visas to visit Florida, Russians were exposed renting luxury oceanfront apartments and hiring top-of-the-line doctors and birthing services, returning home to Moscow with a baby and an American passport in hand.
The State Department has already announced that pregnant women coming to the United States to give birth will have a harder time getting visas in the late stages of pregnancy.
Imagine the attack ads the Republicans could conjure for the 2026 midterms. This headline, quoting a Facebook post, appeared in the New York Times. “If You Believe Your Baby Should Be Born in the USA and Automatically Become an American Citizen, Then You Are at the Right Place.”
Aside from the fact that it’s been the law of the land for the last 157 years, perhaps the strongest argument for keeping birthright citizenship is the chaos that would ensue if the Supreme Court ruled against birthright.
Would people who were previously citizens have their citizenship revoked? What about their children? If these were normal times, I would not be worried.
