OPINION:
Birthright citizenship is dead — for now. President Trump signed an executive order Monday clarifying the meaning of the ambiguous 14th Amendment provision that until now has allowed tourists from anywhere in the world to gift U.S. citizenship to their child merely by giving birth on our soil.
“It’s ridiculous,” the newly returned president said from the Oval Office. “We’re the only country in the world that does this with birthright, as you know. It’s just absolutely ridiculous.”
This policy spawned a birth tourism industry because once the child is a citizen, its foreign parents have a claim to citizenship for themselves. Democratic administrations serve as the national birth tourism promotion board by rewarding participants in the scheme with free education, free lunch and free health care.
In return, handout recipients are expected to vote for Democrats.
Liberals successfully twisted the 14th Amendment’s opening to achieve this outcome. It states: “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.”
This amendment was put forward to overturn the notorious Dred Scott decision and ensure newly freed slaves and their children would enjoy civil rights protections.
The 14th Amendment’s authors never envisioned the clause “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” would one day be used as a pretext for uncontrolled mass migration. During ratification, they clarified what they meant. Sen. Lyman Trumbull said his goal was to “make citizens of everybody born in the United States who owe allegiance to the United States.”
Sen. George Williams said merely being “born within the geographical limits of the United States” wasn’t sufficient to be considered “fully and completely subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.”
Illegal aliens don’t qualify because they owe allegiance to a foreign power — their country of birth. In ignoring this, current policy has drifted far beyond what was originally intended.
Beginning next month, federal agencies will no longer recognize new citizenship claims regarding the offspring of anyone who wasn’t a lawful, permanent resident of the United States at the time of the birth.
Mr. Trump expected a court challenge. Without waiting for the ink to dry, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and 17 other Democratic attorneys general rushed to a Massachusetts courtroom in the hopes an activist federal magistrate would block implementation.
According to their lawsuit, the president’s “unprecedented executive action” used “executive fiat” in a way that causes “immediate and irreparable harm” to Democratic-run states. Anchor babies, the attorneys general argue, “will all be deportable, and many will be stateless. They will lose the ability to access myriad federal services that are available to their fellow Americans.”
Removing those who don’t belong here is the point of the executive order, but that doesn’t mean Democrats are wrong to complain about executive fiat. It’s just a bit convenient for them to bring it up now when they failed to object to President Biden’s student debt cancellation spree via executive order — especially after the high court chided him for doing so.
It certainly would be more appropriate to revise an important policy through congressional action or, better yet, a clarifying constitutional amendment. That may yet happen, as Rep. Brian Babin, Texas Republican, introduced legislation codifying the president’s initiative.
As the present crisis at the border was created through executive fiat, it’s appropriate for now to restore balance through the same process.
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