Get ready for the upcoming Roe v. Wade, as a new Supreme Court case threatens to divide the country, not over abortion, but over “birthright citizenship.”
Trump v. Barbara goes to court this week, and with it comes the question of who is an American.
On his first day back in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order clarifying that children of illegal immigrants or temporary residents are not U.S. citizens simply because they were born on U.S. soil.
People born here to at least one citizen parent automatically become citizens, and Trump’s order recognizes children of legal permanent residents as birthright citizens as well.
But that is not enough for those who insist that the Fourteenth Amendment creates a radical definition of birthright citizenship.
Since even illegal immigrants are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the federal government while in this country, the language of the amendment — “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States” — means that their children, too, are citizens of the United States.
There are a series of Supreme Court rulings and federal laws that advocates of this comprehensive interpretation cite to support their claims.
But the bottom line is that they believe that no executive order, or even legislation from Congress, can water down the meaning of birthright citizenship: If you don’t like their more open definition, there’s nothing you can do about it except try to pass another constitutional amendment.
Of course, with this reading of birthright citizenship rewriting the makeup of America’s citizen body, the odds of passing an amendment to restore rationality are high indeed.
Democrats need voters who are manufactured through the birthright citizenship version of everything to remain competitive — and if they can convert voters through immigration and birthright citizenship, they can hope to make a lasting claim to power.
However, it is not only local political factions that use the loose construction of born citizenship to their advantage.
America’s opponents abroad do the same thing as well.
What could be more beneficial to an enemy than to have agents who enjoy all the “privileges and immunities” of American citizens?
China has exploited the liberal interpretation of the term “birthright citizenship” to its greatest advantage.
Peter Schweitzer analyzed the consequences of decades of birth tourism — which brings pregnant Chinese women or other foreign nationals to our territories, including areas like the Northern Mariana Islands, for the express purpose of giving birth here and obtaining U.S. citizenship for their children — in his book “The Hidden Coup.”
He estimated that “at least 750,000 and perhaps as many as 1.5 million Chinese, who are also American citizens by virtue of being born here, are now heading toward adulthood in China.”
Birth tourism seems almost quaint compared to a new scheme that Chinese citizens have recently been perfecting: using surrogacy to turn foreign embryos into American citizens.
That’s what Guojun Xuan and his partner Silvia Zhang have been doing in a breeding program unveiled in Arcadia, California, last year.
Through the surrogacy company Schwan ran, the couple had more than two dozen of their embryos produced by American women, not only in California but across the country in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Georgia as well.
Birthright citizenship, as liberals understand it — and as they hope the Supreme Court will uphold it — leads to such absurdities, and worse.
It incentivizes and rewards lawbreakers by awarding the priceless award of American citizenship to the children of people who enter this country knowing to violate our laws.
It allows foreign powers easy access to American domestic politics, through the full rights of citizens.
The liberal approach frustrates American democracy itself, by preventing voters from setting limits to birthright citizenship through the normal channels of representative government – that is, through their choices for the president and Congress.
The purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to enshrine the rights of black Americans as natural born citizens, not to grant citizenship to the children of non-Americans in this country illegally.
It certainly was not written to allow foreign powers to have beneficial secondary citizenship for their citizens or subjects as Americans.
Nationals of foreign countries are not normally subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, although anyone can temporarily submit to that jurisdiction by violating the law to come here.
Children are by default subject to the same jurisdiction as their parents – not temporarily, but permanently and in the ordinary course of life.
Trump’s executive order established the correct distinction: between permanent residency and temporary status, and between citizens and illegal aliens.
Now it is up to the Supreme Court to properly distinguish between extreme legal arguments and common sense.
Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Times: Conservative Review.