President Trump, who frequently campaigned against the horrible practice of giving automatic U.S. citizenship to children of illegal aliens, again startled the media by proving that he really meant what he said. In an interview released in late October, Trump said he would issue an executive order stopping birthright citizenship.
“We’re the only country in the world where a person comes in, has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States for 85 years with all of those benefits,” Trump said in an interview for Axios. “It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. And it has to end.”
We’re the only country in the world where a person comes in, has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States for 85 years with all of those benefits
Trump’s blunt talk on the issue of illegal immigration was one of the main reasons Americans elected him in 2016 and gave him a stronger Senate last month. Yet his opponents pretend to be shocked and horrified that he plans to deliver what the voters expected when we elected him president.
“It was always told to me that you needed a constitutional amendment. Guess what? You don’t,” he said, adding that he has run it by legal counsel. “You can definitely do it with an act of Congress. But now they’re saying I can do it just with an executive order,” Trump said.
The media insisted that Trump was just “riling up his base” for the midterm election. Even Republicans, including outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan, wrongly criticized the President. Ryan pontificated to reporters, “Well, you obviously cannot do that.” “I think in this case the 14th Amendment is pretty clear…”
Actually, Ryan is only half right: the 14th Amendment is “pretty clear” — that birth alone is not enough to guarantee U.S. citizenship. To get automatic birthright citizenship, children must be born to parents who are “subject to the jurisdiction” of our country, which means more than just the duty to obey our laws, which applies to everyone, citizen and alien alike. It means a person must owe allegiance to the United States and not to any other nation or state.
You are a citizen of the country or nation to which you owe your allegiance, not just where you temporarily reside.
