On Wednesday, April 1, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in what may be the most important case in decades. The court will now consider President Donald Trump’s executive order rejecting birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens, and the decision will have vast political and economic consequences for every American.
But this all-important case should be open and shut: the Constitution’s text and history are on the president’s side. Nothing in the Constitution requires the government to give citizenship to the children of illegal aliens.
The case centers on the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause, which states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” The key phrase in dispute is “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” A plain reading of the grammar (“and”) shows that birthright citizenship requires two conditions, not just being born here.
Republicans in Congress passed the 14th Amendment in the aftermath of the Civil War to ensure the citizenship of the freed slaves and their children. The same Republican Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which gave citizenship to “all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power.” The statute’s author, Republican Sen. Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, later explained of the amendment, “What do we mean by ‘subject to the jurisdiction of the United States’? Not owing allegiance to anybody else. That is what it means.”
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But illegal aliens are citizens of other countries who have shown up here in violation of the law. They owe allegiance to other countries, not the United States. They don’t meet this criterion.
The left argues that the children of illegal aliens are covered by this clause because of the court’s 1898’s Wong Kim Ark ruling, which gave birthright citizenship to a young man whose parents were barred by the Chinese Exclusion Act. However, the court’s ruling relies on English common law, which required allegiance to be born a subject of the crown.
The children of diplomats, for example, have never been given birthright citizenship, because their parents owe allegiance to another country. Wong Kim Ark applies to children whose parents have a “permanent domicile and residence” in the United States, who owe allegiance to the United States only.
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In fact, after the 14th Amendment, several secretaries of state denied passports to the children of tourists and other people who were not permanent residents. Illegal aliens do not have “permanent domicile and residence” here. Just the opposite: they are subject to deportation under our laws.
The stakes for this case could not be higher. If the court gets it wrong and effectively creates an unlimited constitutional entitlement for all potential illegal border crossers, then the effects will be catastrophic. Under the Biden administration, we already saw the rise of birth tourism by wealthy Chinese and Russians, not to mention the likely thousands — if not tens of thousands — of pregnant women who simply crossed the border illegally.
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If the left’s maximal interpretation of birthright citizenship gets enshrined in the Constitution, then the Biden border invasion will look like a charity 5K. There is simply no way that Reconstruction Republicans in 1866 thought that they were voting for this.
According to a 2024 Gallup poll, more than 170 million people around the world want to immigrate to the United States, which would increase our population by half. If the court gets this case wrong, then they could simply wait for a Democratic president, sneak over the border, and then be rewarded by making their kids citizens entitled to a lifetime of free education, Medicaid, welfare, Section 8 housing, Medicare and Social Security, not to mention the right to vote in our elections and decide our nation’s policies.
This would permanently and irreparably water down the meaning of citizenship, giving it to the children of people with no “permanent domicile” and, more importantly, no allegiance to our republic or to our laws, customs and way of life. The only way to overturn such a ruling would be a constitutional amendment, which would be all but politically impossible. A bad ruling in this case would change the meaning of citizenship forever.
American citizenship is among the greatest treasures in our world. Reconstruction Republicans never intended to make it a universal entitlement, but to confer it upon the freed slaves for whom hundreds of thousands of fellow Americans had just given their lives. If the Supreme Court applies the 14th Amendment as written and as understood by its Framers, then it will protect the treasure of American citizenship for generations to come.
