President-elect Donald Trump believes birthright-citizenship is “ridiculous” and wants to end it after taking office on January 20th. A guarantee that has been enshrined in the Constitution for more than 150 years.
The United States grants citizenship to children born within its borders, regardless of the citizenship of its parents. However, that will soon change.
“We’re going to have to get it changed,” Mr. Trump said in an interview. “We’ll maybe have to go back to the people. But we have to end it.” Although he had raised this issue during his first term as well, nothing substantial happened.
“It’s not the practice of every country, and Trump and his supporters have argued that the system is being abused and that there should be tougher standards for becoming an American citizen,” Russell A Stamets, Partner at Circle of Counsels, told Business Standard.
The right of birthright citizenship is based on the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and is well-established under US law, so elimination would encounter significant legal challenges.
The 14th Amendment says, “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.”
Trump and other opponents of this policy say that this enables “birth tourism”, a phenomenon where pregnant women enter the US specifically to give birth in order for their children to have US citizenship before coming back to their home countries.
“Simply crossing the border and having a child should not entitle anyone to citizenship,” said Eric Ruark, director of research for NumbersUSA, which argues for reducing immigration, as per the Associated Press.
Trump also said, “I don’t want to be breaking up families, so the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back”, which means legal citizens would also be expelled in order to keep families together.
A 2011 factsheet by the American Immigration Council says that removing birthright citizenship would affect everyone, and it will get difficult for American parents to prove citizenship of their children.
“Our birth certificates are proof of our citizenship. If birthright citizenship were eliminated, US citizens could no longer use their birth certificates as proof of citizenship,” the factsheet says.
According to Pew Research’s analysis of the 2022 US Census, about 4.8 million Indian-Americans are living in America, of which 34 per cent, or 1.6 million, were born in the country. These individuals are citizens of the United States under the current law. If Trump were to abolish this law, 1.6 million Indians will be impacted.
However, the president cannot amend the Constitution and an executive effort to restrict the right would amount to violation of the 14th Amendment.
“I don’t take his statements very seriously. He has been saying things like this for almost a decade,” Alex Nowrasteh, vice president at the pro-immigration Cato Institute told the Associated Press. “He didn’t do anything to further this agenda when he was president before.”
