Trump is right about birthright citizenship

OPINION:

President-elect Donald Trump has long questioned the prudence of automatically granting birthright citizenship to the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens. After restating this stance in a recent interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he has sparked further discussion.

Host Kristen Welker attempted to browbeat Mr. Trump into repudiating his position while misleading her audience about the meaning of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

“The 14th Amendment, though, says that, quote, ‘All persons born in the United States are citizens,’” Ms. Welker said.

This is false, and a longtime political journalist such as Ms. Welker should understand that. In reality, the plain text 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.”

For generations, there has been a contentious debate among legal scholars and activists over what the text of the 14th Amendment demands. Proponents of birthright citizenship argue that the text automatically ensures citizenship for anyone born on U.S. soil, no matter the circumstances. In contrast, opponents argue the children of illegal aliens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. and therefore are not entitled to automatic U.S. citizenship.

The Supreme Court has decided this issue. In United States v. Wong Kim Ark, decided in 1898, the court held that if a child is born in the United States to parents residing here with the permission of the United States, that child is a citizen under the 14th Amendment — otherwise, that child is not. Thus, the court held that children of illegal aliens — who do not reside here with permission — and of tourists — who do not reside here but are only visiting — are not citizens. Since the Supreme Court has never overturned this case, it is still controlling precedent.

Mr. Trump is right in another way, too. The president-elect is correct that automatic birthright citizenship has eroded American sovereignty. Roughly 5.8 million children of illegal aliens live in the U.S., according to a study from the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

There is no doubt that the promise of birthright citizenship is an incentive for illegal immigration to the U.S. and is a major reason more than 10 million aliens have crossed the U.S. border illegally over the past few years. What this means is that foreigners willing to break our laws, and not Americans, have been deciding in a major way who are and will be U.S. citizens.

Mr. Trump is also correct when he notes that the U.S. is an outlier compared with the rest of the world on this issue. European countries, for example, have much tighter restrictions on birthright citizenship than the U.S. does. Germany requires one parent to have lived in the country for at least eight years, while the U.K. requires one parent to be a citizen or have settled there. These countries have their own immigration problems, but they are not subject to a pernicious “birth tourism” industry the way the United States is.

Recently, members of Congress have raised concerns about pregnant Chinese women arriving in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory, in order to guarantee their offspring U.S. citizenship. During Mr. Trump’s first term in office, his administration attempted to crack down on such tourism by implementing a rule barring temporary visitor visas for foreign nationals seeking to visit the U.S. intending to give birth to a child here.

That such a rule is even necessary gets to the crux of the problem. Birthright citizenship is a scam, and as the voters made clear by the results of this last election, they are tired of paying for this intentional misreading of the Constitution. The European model offers plenty of guidance for how the U.S. should approach dealing with aliens born on U.S. soil, but a blanket guarantee of citizenship for all children of foreign nationals is untenable and does nothing to serve American interests or American values.

The president-elect has vowed to do everything in his power to terminate this corrupt practice, and he is right to do so. Automatic birthright citizenship is a farce that should have been ended a long time ago.

• Dale L. Wilcox is executive director and general counsel for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a public interest law firm working to defend the rights and interests of the American people from the negative effects of mass migration.