Trump aims to end birthright citizenship, says American citizens with family here illegally may be deported
Trump aims to end birthright citizenship, says American citizens with family here illegally may be deported
President-elect Donald Trump, in an exclusive interview with “Meet the Press,” also said he is open to working with Democrats on a legislative way to keep Dreamers in the United States.
Summary
Trump announced plans to end birthright citizenship via executive action, despite its constitutional basis in the 14th Amendment.
He also outlined a mass deportation policy, starting with undocumented immigrants who committed crimes and potentially expanding to mixed-status families, who could face deportation as a unit.
Trump said he wants to avoid family separations but left the decision to families.
While doubling down on immigration restrictions, Trump expressed willingness to work with Democrats to create protections for Dreamers under DACA, citing their long-standing integration into U.S. society.
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I am not a lawyer, this is my interpretation of the situation.
So heres what I think will happen.
Birthright citizenship will not be completely gone.
To recap, 14th Amendment, Section1 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.
What will most likely happen is the DoJ under trump will take it to the supreme court, then the 6 conservatives will rule that unauthorized immigrants are not "subject to the jurisdiction thereof", so therefore their children do not get citizenship at birth. Maybe this is retroactive, maybe it applies from then on, I don't know.
But thats the most likely scenario.
Because we had a very conservative court back in the 1898 (remember, black people in this era couldn't even vote in southern states) that ruled that (United States v. Wong Kim Ark)
a child born in the United States, of parents of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China, but have a permanent domicile and residence in the United States, and are there carrying on business, and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China",[5] automatically became a U.S. citizen at birth.
So I doubt this supreme court is more conservative than a 1898 supreme court so they most likely are not overturning that.
Basically, that court ruled that children of permanent residents have birthright citizenship, but never ruled on whether children of unauthorized immigrants have birthright citizenship. This 6-3 supreme court is gonna answer that. Which is gonna be a no, unfortunately.
More likely, a lower court shoots it down, and there's no basis for an appeals court to do anything different. They tweak it and try again. That one also fails. Try again.
Eventually, they get something that threads the needle. This is how the "Muslim ban" went.
I mean, the supreme court could always pull out the "Original Jurisdiction" BS and take it straight there.
There are two other factors at work:
- A bunch of conservative-related businesses know what a clusterfuck it will be for their bottom line; that will push the Supreme Court to pretend there's no issue here
- The Supreme Court can only take so many cases at a time
Even if we assume they're just going to bypass the usual ladder up the federal court system, they can't do that on everything just as a practical matter.
I enjoy the notion that they would argue that undocumented immigrants are not subject to US law in the fashion that diplomats aren't subject to US law, since that would effectively prevent anything except deportation as a punishment for crimes.
"Your children can't be citizens, but you can murder with impunity until we ask you to leave".Lol dont give them ideas. They could treat them as "Enemy Aliens", putting them in guantanamo.
I concur with your interpretation. But as for your final line, I’m not sure why this interpretation is unfortunate. We need to streamline and overhaul the immigration process for sure, but why is encouraging unregulated immigration a good thing?
I say unfortunately because there could be problems with a child of an undocumented immigrant that is born and grew up in the US for their entire life, then suddenly losing their citizenship because of a court decision.
Maybe if the decision did not apply retroactively, then I'd might be okay with it.
Oh yeah, that’s definitely a bad outcome, I agree. Thankfully retroactive laws seem to be much harder to pass.