{"id":162821,"date":"2026-07-23T08:51:34","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T08:51:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/162821\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T08:51:34","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T08:51:34","slug":"trumps-bogus-arguments-against-birthright-citizenship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/162821\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s bogus arguments against birthright citizenship"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Trump has long been fixated on birthright citizenship, the longstanding constitutional guarantee that nearly all children born on American soil are automatically American citizens. In his first term, he floated the idea<\/a> of ending birthright citizenship through executive fiat. And on the first day of his second term, he signed an executive order<\/a> seeking to do just that, carving out new exceptions to who is guaranteed birthright citizenship, including children born to parents who are in the United States either temporarily or without legal status. The executive order was immediately challenged, and last month, the Supreme Court struck the order down in a 6-3 vote<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts made clear that birthright citizenship as we have come to know it over the past 150 years is here to stay. \u201cCitizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights \u2014 to freely participate in our political community,\u201d Roberts wrote<\/a>. \u201cThe Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to \u2018every free-born person in this land.\u2019 We keep that promise today.\u201d<\/p>\n

And yet, despite the court\u2019s decision, Trump has still not accepted that citizenship is a near-universal birthright in the United States and is still looking for ways to undermine it. \u201cI will be asking for a Rehearing by the United States Supreme Court, IMMEDIATELY. This miscarriage of justice will destroy America if they don\u2019t change their absolutely insane decision,\u201d Trump said in a recent social media post<\/a>. The chances that the Supreme Court will take up Trump\u2019s request are very slim: The last time the Court agreed to rehear a case was in 1965<\/a>, and the last time it reversed a decision based on a rehearing was in 1956.<\/p>\n

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A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr.<\/p>\n

But Trump\u2019s insistence that the United States can somehow do away with birthright citizenship without passing a constitutional amendment has only prompted more efforts to undo birthright citizenship by politicians and activists on the right. Earlier this week, for example, Republican Senator Jim Banks, of Indiana, introduced legislation<\/a> to redefine birthright citizenship. And right-wing commentators have attacked Justice Amy Coney Barrett<\/a>, whom Trump appointed in 2020, for voting with the majority, calling her a \u201cDEI hire\u201d and demanding that she be removed from the bench. <\/p>\n

The right\u2019s effort to undermine birthright citizenship rests on flimsy legal arguments \u2014 and flimsy factual ones, too. To hear Trump\u2019s allies tell it, the citizenship clause is routinely taken advantage of by so-called \u201cbirth tourism\u201d \u2014 that is, pregnant women coming to the United States on a tourist visa so that they can deliver their babies in the United States and automatically guarantee them citizenship. In his social media post asking for a rehearing of the case, Trump claimed<\/a> that \u201cSigns and Billboards are being put up all over our Southern Border, and Mexico, advertising BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP, with \u2018Deliveries starting at $4000.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The problem with this argument is that it doesn\u2019t make sense from a legal or practical standpoint. <\/p>\n

Even if someone believes that birthright citizenship in the United States is too generous, the Supreme Court made the right decision and upheld the Constitution. The language of the citizenship clause in the 14th Amendment is plain and simple: \u201cAll 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.\u201d That\u2019s why the narrow exceptions to the birthright citizenship clause include the children of foreign diplomats and occupying armies \u2014 people who are not subject to US jurisdiction. People who are in the United States either temporarily or unlawfully, on the other hand, are still subject to US jurisdiction.<\/p>\n

Moreover, \u201cbirth tourism\u201d is not such a significant immigration problem that it should prompt the Supreme Court to entirely redefine birthright citizenship. It\u2019s undeniable that some children born in the United States are indeed born to tourists. In many cases, it\u2019s not planned. For example, Folarin Balogun, the soccer player who played on the US men\u2019s national team in the World Cup, was born in New York<\/a> after his mother, who was visiting the United States, was prevented by an airline from flying back to London because she was too far along in her pregnancy. (Despite his criticism of birthright citizenship, Trump still intervened<\/a> in controversial fashion to get FIFA to reverse the red card a referee gave to Balogun.)<\/p>\n

But the overall number of babies born to tourists is incredibly small. According to researchers at Penn State, only 0.3 percent of US births<\/a> can be attributed to birth tourism. If the US government still finds that to be a problem, then it can tackle it through tightening visa rules and go after cases of visa fraud \u2014 rather than ending birthright citizenship as we know it \u2014 just as the Obama, Biden, and Trump administrations have<\/a> in the past.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, no matter how conservatives feel about birthright citizenship, it is enshrined in the Constitution, and the Supreme Court has again made clear that the text in the citizenship clause means exactly what it says. Citizenship is a promise to every person born in the United States \u2014 one that, as Roberts says, the country intends to keep. If Trump or Republicans want to change how we define citizenship, then they will have to make that case to the American people and pass a constitutional amendment. Anything short of that would be not just a lazy effort but outright unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us @GlobeOpinion<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n