President-elect Donald Trump calls birthright citizenship “ridiculous” and wants to end it after he takes office on January 20. 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 their parents. However, that will soon change.
“We're going to have to change it,” Trump said in an interview. 'Maybe we should go back to the people. But we have to put an end to it.' Although he had raised this issue during his first term as well, nothing significant happened.
“It is not the practice of every country, and Trump and his supporters have argued that the system is being abused and that there should be stricter standards for becoming a US citizen,” Russell A Stamets, partner at Circle of Counsels, told Business Standard .
Birthright rights are based on the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and are well entrenched under U.S. law, so elimination would pose significant legal challenges.
The 14th Amendment says: “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.”
Trump and other opponents of the policy say it allows for “birth tourism,” a phenomenon in which pregnant women enter the U.S. specifically to give birth so that their children can gain U.S. citizenship before returning to their home countries.
“Simply crossing the border and having a child should not give anyone the right to citizenship,” said Eric Ruark, research director for NumbersUSA, which advocates for reducing immigration, according to the Associated Press.
Trump also said, “I don't want to break up families, so the only way you don't break up the family is to keep them together and send them all back,” meaning legal citizens would also be expelled to keep families together.
A 2011 fact sheet from the American Immigration Council says abolishing birthright citizenship would affect everyone and make it difficult for American parents to prove their children's citizenship.
“Our birth certificates are proof of our citizenship. If birthright citizenship were eliminated, U.S. citizens would no longer be able to use their birth certificates as proof of citizenship,” the fact sheet said.
According to Pew Research's analysis of the 2022 US Census, there are approximately 4.8 million Indian-Americans living in America, of whom 34 percent, or 1.6 million, were born in the country. These individuals are citizens of the United States under current law. If Trump were to abolish this law, 1.6 million Indians would be affected.
However, the president cannot amend the Constitution, and an attempt by the executive branch to limit this right would amount to a violation of the 14th Amendment.
“I don't take his statements very seriously. He's been saying these things for almost a decade,” Alex Nowrasteh, vice president of the pro-immigration Cato Institute, told the Associated Press. “He did nothing to advance this agenda when he was previously president.”
