New Jersey and more than a dozen U.S. states said Tuesday they are challenging the president’s executive order. Donald Trump ending the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship.
Democratic New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin said Tuesday that he is leading a group of 18 states, the District of Columbia and the city of San Francisco in filing a lawsuit to block Trump’s order.
“Presidents have extensive power, but they are not kings”Platkin said.
Trump’s order would end the policy of granting automatically citizenship to people born in the United States, a measure that he announced during the campaign that he would carry out once in office.
Platkin and migrant rights advocates point out the 14th Amendment to the Constitution which says that people born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction are citizensstating that it is clear that it applies to people whose parents were not legal citizens at the time of their birth.
Trump’s roughly 700-word executive order, issued Monday night, amounts to the realization of something he has talked about during the presidential campaign. But whether he succeeds is uncertain as migrant rights advocates file lawsuits to block the president.
Here’s a look at birthright citizenship, Trump’s executive order, and the reactions it has sparked:
Birthright citizenship means that anyone born in the United States is a citizen, regardless of their parents’ immigration status. People, for example, in the United States on a tourist or other visa or who are in the country illegally can become parents of a citizen if their child is born here.
It has been in place for decades and enshrined in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, supporters say. But Trump and his allies dispute the interpretation of the amendment and say stricter standards are needed to become a citizen.
The order challenges whether the 14th Amendment automatically extends citizenship to anyone born in the United States.
The 14th Amendment was born in the aftermath of the Civil War and was ratified in 1868. It says: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction are citizens of the United States and the state in which they reside.”
Trump’s order excludes the following people from automatic citizenship: those whose mothers were not legally in the United States and whose fathers were not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents; people whose mothers were in the country legally but temporarily and whose fathers were not citizens or legal permanent residents.
It continues to prohibit federal agencies from recognizing the citizenship of people in those categories. It goes into effect 30 days from Tuesday, February 19.
The 14th Amendment did not always guarantee birthright citizenship to everyone born in the United States. In fact, Congress did not grant citizenship to all American Indians born in the United States until 1924.
In 1898 an important birthright citizenship case unfolded in the United States Supreme Court. The court held that Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrants, was a U.S. citizen because he was born in the country. After a trip abroad, he faced denial of reentry by the federal government on the grounds that he was not a citizen under the Chinese Exclusion Act.
But some advocates of immigration restrictions have argued that, while the case clearly applied to children born to parents who are both legal migrants, It is less clear whether it applies to children born to parents without legal status.
Shortly after Trump signed the order, migrant rights groups sued to stop it.
American Civil Liberties Union chapters in New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts, along with other migrant rights advocates, filed a lawsuit in federal court in New Hampshire.
The lawsuit asks the court to find the order unconstitutional. The case of a woman identified as “Carmen”, who is pregnant but is not a citizen. The lawsuit says he has lived in the United States for more than 15 years and has a pending visa application that could lead to permanent status. She has no other immigration status, and neither does the father of her unborn child, according to the lawsuit.
“Depriving children of the ‘priceless treasure’ of citizenship is a serious injury,” the lawsuit says. “It denies them the full membership in American society to which they are entitled.”
(AP)
