US Supreme Court Rejects Trump’s Bid to Restrict Birthright Citizenship

The United States Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down President Donald Trump’s attempt to restrict birthright citizenship, rejecting his administration’s effort to narrow who qualifies for automatic US citizenship at birth.

In a closely watched 6-3 ruling delivered on the final day of its term, the court upheld the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship, preserving the right to American citizenship for nearly everyone born on US soil.

Trump had signed an executive order on the first day of his second term directing that children born in the United States to parents living in the country illegally or on temporary visas would no longer automatically acquire US citizenship.

READ ALSO: FULL LIST: UK Hikes Visa, Citizenship Application Fee For Nigerians, Others From April

Lower courts blocked the move, ruling that under the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment nearly everyone born on US soil is an American citizen.

The Supreme Court agreed in a majority opinion penned by Chief Justice John Roberts.

“Children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States and are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause,” Roberts wrote.

In an unprecedented move for a sitting US president, Trump personally attended oral arguments on birthright citizenship at the Supreme Court in April.

Trump stayed for the presentation by his solicitor general, John Sauer, but did not remain for the arguments of American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney Cecillia Wang, who defended birthright citizenship.

Trump’s bid to end birthright citizenship was part of his wider campaign to restrict immigration, which includes the expulsion of millions of undocumented migrants.

– ‘Birth tourism’ –
During oral arguments before the Supreme Court, Sauer argued that unrestricted birthright citizenship encourages illegal immigration and “birth tourism,” in which foreigners come to the United States solely to give birth.

The 14th Amendment states that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”

It does not apply to those not subject to US jurisdiction — the children of foreign diplomats, for example.

The Trump administration argued that the 14th Amendment, passed in the wake of the 1861-1865 Civil War, addresses citizenship rights of former slaves and not the children of undocumented migrants or visitors.

Trump’s executive order banning birthright citizenship was premised on the notion that anyone in the United States illegally, or on a visa, is not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the country and therefore excluded from automatic citizenship.

The Supreme Court rejected such a narrow definition in a landmark 1898 case involving a man named Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco in 1873 to parents who had come to the United States from China.

After a visit to China, Wong Kim Ark was denied reentry into the United States in 1895 under the Chinese Exclusion Acts.

The Supreme Court ruled, however, that he was a US citizen by virtue of being born in the United States.

The Supreme Court’s rejection of Trump’s bid to end birthright citizenship is the third major loss for Trump this term. The justices struck down most of his global tariffs in February and on Monday they blocked his bid to fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook.

AFP