Within days of taking office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that has been misconstrued by most of the talking heads out there as “ending birthright citizenship.” This characterization uses an overly broad brush to paint over what is actually an extremely nuanced issue with regard to the interpretation of citizenship in the 14th Amendment.
Section 1 of the amendment starts off with one of the most consequential lines of any of the Reconstruction Amendments passed in the wake of the Civil War: “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 Trump’s executive order does is limit the interpretation of that line in the legal sense. In the order, Trump directs the government not to legally (through documentation, etc.) recognize the citizenship of anyone “(1) when that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the person’s 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 was lawful but temporary, and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.”
In other words, if the parents are not in the United States legally, then the child is not automatically granted citizenship.
Trump in Court
The executive order was immediately challenged in court in several states, with groups like the ACLU latching themselves onto the cause, and the Trump administration has already lost in at least one federal court. The judge in that case strongly rebuked Trump’s actions. […]
— Read More: redstate.com
