Birthright Citizenship
U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D–IL) claims that “President Trump is trying to rewrite the Constitution by royal fiat” because “children born in the United States are citizens. Period.”
IN FACT, the Constitution grants birthright citizenship only to people who are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. This doesn’t mean “within its jurisdiction,” a phrase that appears in the very next sentence of the Constitution and is used for separate purposes.
Moreover, Jacob Howard, the U.S. Senator who crafted the birthright citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, introduced it in the Senate by explaining that this “will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who”:
- are “foreigners, aliens,”
- “belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers,”
- are “an Indian belonging to a tribe,”
- are not subject to the “full and complete jurisdiction” of the United States, meaning the “same jurisdiction in extent and quality as applies to every citizen of the United States now.”
As ratified, the birthright citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment contains the exact words proposed by Howard. Hence, there can be little doubt that it means exactly what he said it means.
The 14th Amendment doesn’t prohibit federal legislators from granting citizenship to people not included in its birthright citizenship clause. This occurred in 1924 when Congress passed and President Calvin Coolidge signed a law that awarded U.S. citizenship to all “non-citizen Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States.”
In contrast, no such legislation has been passed for the children of illegal immigrants or tourists.
The facts above and others prove that:
- the Constitution doesn’t grant birthright citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants, temporary residents, visitors, or tourists.
- the oft-cited 1898 Supreme Court ruling in Wong Kim Ark applied to the child of legal immigrants — not illegal immigrants.
- Durbin’s doctrine of citizenship by birth location is grounded in royal and imperial dogmas that the founders of the U.S. rejected.
