Citizenship is Not a Birthright: Part I

Since his inauguration, President Trump has honored his promises to voters by protecting women’s sports, deporting foreign criminals, and repatriating energy production to the United States. He has frozen foreign aid to all but a key few allies. He has withdrawn from the hostile and hypocritical World Health Organisation, UN Human Rights Council, and Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA). He has starved the global Leftist activist and Islamist terror networks of funds, by pausing all payments from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and appointing Secretary Marco Rubio the acting administrator. Elon Musk has unleashed DOGE, cutting wasteful spending wherever he and his bright young band of entrepreneurs can find it. (They have already made a billion dollar dent in the deficit.)

Unlike his unexpected and chaotic first term, Trump is determined to repeal and replace decades-old legislation which could obstruct his mandate. His executive order, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity” rescinded legislation passed by the Clinton, Obama, and even Johnson administrations, which enshrined anti-white racism into law under the rubric of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). This return to meritocracy was distorted in headlines as a rolling-back of parts of the Civil Rights Act. (Something which must be done to dismantle the Department of Justice’s Community Relations Service, subverted long ago by Islamist groups.) 

But his most controversial move was the executive order, “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship” — which sought to end birthright citizenship. Predictably, this was blocked by judges. In late February, a 4th circuit court of appeals in Richmond, Virginia rejected the Trump administration’s request for an order to halt a nationwide injunction, issued by a federal judge in Maryland, on a 2-1 vote. Judge Deborah Boardman said in her ruling: “Today, virtually every baby born on US soil is a US citizen upon birth… That is the law and tradition of our country.” Another district court judge in Seattle called the executive order “blatantly unconstitutional” — a ruling which foreshadows the necessity to escalate the matter to the Supreme Court. 

The American Civil Liberties Union stretched the definition of “American” to absurdity, in the lawsuit they brought against the Trump administration on behalf of “Immigrant Rights” groups. (It seems only the citizenship of those who enter illegally, without doing the costly paperwork that legal immigrants do to comply with the law , matters to the ACLU.) But belonging to a nation means so much more than simply being in its borders. Here’s why Americans of WASP and immigrant stock alike should support Trump’s efforts to end birthright citizenship.

The text of the order explains that, under the Fourteenth Amendment, a citizen is “a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof”. 

“Among the categories of individuals born in the United States and not subject to the jurisdiction thereof, the privilege of United States citizenship does not automatically extend to persons born in the United States:  (1) when that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth, or (2) when that person’s mother’s presence in the United States at the time of said person’s birth was lawful but temporary (such as, but not limited to, visiting the United States under the auspices of the Visa Waiver Program or visiting on a student, work, or tourist visa) and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.”

The disagreement now is whether “jurisdiction” means, as the Department of Justice argues, being subject to the laws of the United States, or just being on its soil (jus soli), within its borders. The Trump administration argues that, because illegal immigrants have not complied with US law, and both tourists and temporary visa recipients receive fewer constitutional rights, neither they or their children are “subject to the jurisdiction” of US law. Citizenship at birth therefore requires one or both parents to be US citizens (jus sanguinis ).

Where does birthright citizenship come from? The Fourteenth Amendment was passed in 1868 to grant freed slaves citizenship after the Civil War. Citizenship was extended to anyone “born or naturalized in the United States” when the Supreme Court ruled, in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the son of Chinese immigrants born in San Francisco could not be denied re-entry under the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. From then on, any child born in America was given citizenship, no matter their parents’ immigration status.

Immigration from Asia was previously banned by the Chinese Exclusion and 1924 Johnson-Reed acts. In 1965, the Hart-Celler Act abolished Johnson-Reed’s national origin preferences for immigrants from the UK and Western Europe. Immigrants from Europe became only 20% of yearly migration after Hart-Celler. Asian immigrants received a large number of Hart-Celler’s family reunification visas. Within ten years, the Asian population of America doubled. Today Asia provides 28% of all immigrants — the most of any continent. 

Family reunification visas are not contentious because Asian immigrants do not contribute great things to America; nor because Americans are a uniquely bigoted and unwelcoming people. It’s because they have instead been exploited by illegal migrants, tourists, and temporary visa recipients as a way to gain permanent citizenship after having a child in the US. Through birthright citizenship, this baby becomes an “anchor”: a bargaining chip for the rest of the family to receive citizenship too. This can and is exploited by immigrants from all continents, legal and illegal alike. The most recent Pew Research data found that 250,000 children were born to illegal immigrant parents in 2016. This is no doubt much higher after the record number of Southern Border crossings during the Biden administration.

It seems to me that those arguing for the jus soli interpretation are being dishonest. Most of the “immigrants rights” activists filing these lawsuits don’t believe in borders. The law can only be practiced within a nation — defined by its borders. But the people arguing to give legal citizenship to anyone born on US soil think that borders are racist. For example, the ACLU’s lawsuit announcement quotes critical race theorist Karla McKanders, who says

“From the 1790 Naturalization Act to the infamous Dred Scott decision, U.S. citizenship has long been shaped to uphold racial hierarchy, … 

“By sidestepping the constitutional amendment process, this executive order attempts to unilaterally rewrite the 14th Amendment — an essential Reconstruction-era measure that granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the U.S., including formerly enslaved people. This action seeks to resurrect a racialized notion of who is American in opposition to LDF’s commitment working towards to a multi-racial democracy.”

We see in McKanders’ language a revolutionary ambition to remake America: from a constitutional republic, where the law is applied to individuals equally regardless of their race, into a “multi-racial democracy”, where the law treats groups differently based on their identity. She accuses her opponents of wanting to “resurrect a racialized notion of who is American”, when it is she who has previously written that colorblind, merit-based immigration laws are inherently racist because they cause “the disproportionate denial of asylum for Black and brown asylum seekers.” McKanders is calling for making race the most important factor in immigration policy, to ensure equitable outcomes, while calling the Trump administration racist for applying the law regardless of race. 

This is a sleight-of-hand. Firstly, why is McKanders so desperate to make people citizens of a racist country, within borders that she doesn’t believe in? But more importantly: the only laws which create a hierarchy of race in America are those McKanders supports. There is no modern Dred Scott decision: where, in 1857, the Supreme Court ruled that enslaved black Americans were not citizens purely because of the color of their skin. In fact, only the affirmative action laws, ruled racist by the Supreme Court in 2023, and race-based hiring policies, practiced after the Black Lives Matter riots in 2020, discriminate on the basis of race. Because of these laws, 94 percent of S&P 100 company roles created after 2020 were given to non-whites. This is clear racial bias — but because it’s against white Americans, McKanders doesn’t care. 

Neither does McKanders care about making fair and sensible policies about citizenship: only about using marginal cases, and making claims of oppression, to advance race-Marxist revolution. Critical race theory was communist at its inception: with author Kimberlie Crenshaw and her contemporaries explaining that anything less than equality of outcome for all races was proof of white-on-black racism. The only solution is, according to Ibram X. Kendi:

“The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination. […] And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently.”

Translation: we must be racist against innocent white Americans to enrich racial grievance activists in the present, because injustices were done against black people in the past. This exact kind of race politics is what many immigrants and minorities voted against, by electing Donald Trump last November. It is McKanders and the critical race theorists who thinks America is a “racial hierarchy”, and are playing resentful identity politics in the hopes of inverting that hierarchy and putting herself at the top. This lawsuit is an ideologically-motivated attack on justice and all being equal before the law, and must be dismissed.