President Donald Trump this week issued an unprecedented array of troubling executive orders including a move to end a century-old immigration policy known as birthright citizenship guaranteeing that U.S.-born children are citizens regardless of their parents’ immigration status.
The executive order is an attempt to empower his administration’s plan to deport people living illegally in the United States who have citizen children.
A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked Trump’s executive order calling it “blatantly unconstitutional,” during the first hearing in a multi-state effort challenging the order.
The matter is expected to be ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
At issue is the right to citizenship granted to anyone born in the U.S., regardless of their parents’ immigration status. People in the United States on a visa or in the country illegally can become the parents of a citizen if their child is born here.
The right is enshrined in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, according to many legal scholars. But Trump and his supporters dispute the reading of the amendment and say there needs to be tougher standards on becoming a citizen.
Trump’s order questions that the 14th Amendment extends citizenship automatically to anyone born in the United States.
The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War. The 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’s order asserts that the children of noncitizens are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. The administration argues that amendment excludes people from automatic citizenship whose mothers were not legally in the United States and whose fathers were not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents, and people whose mothers were in the country legally but on a temporary basis and whose fathers were not citizens or legal permanent residents.
The executive order is scheduled to take place on Feb. 19.
Trump falsely claimed that the United States is alone in offering birthright citizenship. The fact is more than 30 countries do—including Canada and Mexico.
Democratic attorneys general from 22 states are right in suing to block Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship. The suit asks the court to find the order to be unconstitutional.
Trump cannot with a stroke of a pen be allowed to go unchallenged in reversing a policy that legal scholars and civil liberties groups say is legally protected in the U.S. Constitution.
(Reprinted from the Philadelphia Tribune)