Is there a Legal Precedent?
Recent efforts made by President Trump and his administration have placed Birthright Citizenship in question. The initial executive order, titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship” and signed on January 20, 2025, is designed to restrict citizenship access to those born in the United States while their parents are unlawfully present within the country, and would have gone into effect for those born thirty days after the initial act was signed. Already, the order has been challenged by at least ten lawsuits in various states, and the path forward for the executive order seems extremely difficult from a legal standpoint.
Despite these challenges, the Trump administration is poised to fight the ruling, with some in the administration, including Vice President J.D. Vance, going as far as stating that “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive branch’s legitimate power,” on a post on Twitter. Still, even if the Trump administration successfully pushes through its restriction on citizenship, it would be a historic blunder that would actively harm not only 250 years of American case law, but the US economy as a whole. At 7C Lingo, our extensive experience engaging with America’s immigrant population has given us a unique insight into what we stand to lose by restricting citizenship in this way.
The Legal Precedent for Birthright Citizenship
The main pillar of law upholding Birthright Citizenship is the 14th Amendment; specifically, the 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 and of the State wherein they reside.” The amendment goes on to state that no individual state could limit the citizenship of any person born within.
While this enshrined the rule of birthright citizenship within the law, legal precedent for the ruling stretched back as far as 1830, with the Supreme Court’s ruling on Inglis v. Trustees of the Sailor Snug Harbour serving as the first official court ruling in America to state that someone born within the United States is a United States citizen. After the ratifying of the 14th Amendment, additional support for Birthright Citizenship has continued to be filtered down from dozens of court decisions, including United States v. Wong Kim Ark, a landmark case that is actually serving as the bedrock for many legal challenges against Trump’s inciting executive order.
The Case for its Removal
At the moment, the Trump Admin’s legal case mainly relies on the phrasing of the 14th Amendment. Specifically, they argue that the inclusion of the phrase “…and subject to the jurisdiction thereof [the United States of America]” allows for the federal government to deny citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants. The initial reasoning for this phrasing was to exclude the children of diplomats who were born in the United States during their parent’s tenure overseas, but there is very little precedent for the President’s current reading of the phrasing.
Other Examples of Birthright Citizenship
Some have tried to claim that the United States of America is the only nation in the world with a Birthright Citizenship clause that is this open, but that is simply not the case. In fact, the US is one of 30 nations in the world with a comparable stance on birthright citizenship, including Canada and Mexico. Additionally, much of the wording for the US’s birthright citizenship clause is based on British common law tracing back to the 1600’s, meaning the idea of birthright citizenship is older than the US itself.
The Economic Effects of Ending Birthright Citizenship
Based on statistics gathered by Pew in 2018, Trump’s executive order would reduce the amount of US citizens added to the population per year by around 250,000. It is important to keep in mind, though, that the greatest beneficiary of the birthright citizenship clause are legal immigrants to the United States who are currently seeking citizenship status while also expanding their families. Since pursuing permanent citizenship is a multi-year process with dozens of bureaucratic processes to navigate, many work visa recipients, such as those in the tech and engineering fields, rely on using birthright citizenship in order to secure their newborn children vital resources like insurance. By removing birthright citizenship, we disincentivize these workers from bringing their talent and expertise to the states, gutting a vital resource for several sectors within our economy. At 7C Lingo, we recognize the incredible talent many of these workers bring to our nation, and fully believe that this order is a misstep on the part of the President.
