This land is not your land: Trump moves to limit access to US citizenship

For generations, people who have lived and worked in the United States have assumed that if they give birth to a child there, that child will have the right to citizenship, which comes with official documents and a government ID card.

That may change soon.

US President Donald Trump declared executive order on his first day in office, he stunned immigration watchers in his scope.

Everyone is expected Seek to end birthright citizenship for the children of people who entered the United States illegally by overturning a constitutional law passed for more than 125 years. But then he took a giant step forward. As it is currently written, his order applies millions More people working legally inside the US nonimmigrant work visa — including many Canadians — further plunging families into legal limbo. Only the children of at least one permanent resident will be saved.

“This is unprecedented,” said Angela Maria Kelley, general counsel for the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

“It would be a historic boost for our national identity. And it’s just a basic principle that if you’re born here, you belong here. And your parents’ past is not your future.”

The order is not retroactive – it only applies to future births starting next month. And it will be challenged in court, it will already face several lawsuits.

In the meantime, that means uncertainty for people and what could be an epic years-long legal battle all the way to the US Supreme Court.

The current order bars citizenship documents for a wide range of children, from tech workers on temporary visas to long-term workers at international organizations like the United Nations.

It says that no U.S. official should issue or accept citizenship documents for the child of a mother with legal but temporary status, such as a work, student or tourist visa, if the father is neither a citizen nor a permanent resident.

It defies a 125-year-old law

Trump knows legal challenges will come. He acknowledged as much when he signed the order in the Oval Office on Monday evening.

“It’s a good thing. Birthright. It’s a big thing,” Trump told reporters as he signed a series of executive orders.

He said that he is sure that there are legal grounds for this. But he also seemed to be unaware of the most basic fact of the matter.

Trump declared that the US is the only country with birthright citizenship: “It’s absolutely ridiculous.”

However, citizenship is granted as a basic right by dozens of countries around the world The vast majority of the Americas – Including Canada.

Others have conditions, and some do not at all, including southern and eastern Europe, northern Africa, and most of Asia. Kelley said the change would make things especially difficult for people who have children in the United States if their home country doesn’t recognize an extraterritorial birth.

This will put their children at risk of becoming stateless, he said. Pregnant women living in the United States must research not only American law, but also the laws of their own country when deciding where to give birth.

Who is at risk?

He listed some of the immediate challenges to the order, including potential impacts on people a suit From more than 20 blue states.

The unexplained numbers would be stateless — ineligible for everything from a driver’s license to a Social Security number to the ability to legally work, the suit says.

“All of them will be deported, and many will be stateless,” the lawsuit says.

“The result will be a multi-generational class of marginal families, each generation increasingly separated from, but forever excluded from, any country other than the United States.”

Other costume gave statements about affected people. It was filed in the U.S. District Court of New Hampshire by Indonesian and Latino community groups.

A couple came to the United States on tourist visas in 2023 and applied for asylum; she will have a baby in a month.

Another woman has lived in the United States for more than 20 years; he was illegally imported as a child and now in the so-called Dreamers program. She has a baby due in March.

They are among several anecdotes recorded in the suit of people with no official documents who keep their identities secret.

The back story begins with the Civil War

Their case may now depend on the interpretation of a 157-year-old man constitutional amendment.

It was written after slavery 14th amendment The racist decision of the US Supreme Court rejected the Dred Scott case and declared that the descendants of African American slaves could not become citizens.

The 1868 amendment clarified that US citizenship belongs to anyone born in the United States and “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

The current fight depends on the final part on the nails.

Historically, this has meant almost anyone born in the United States, except for certain children categories of diplomatsenjoys full diplomatic immunity.

But Trump’s allies object to the most significant case involving the son of US-born Chinese immigrants.

Wong Kim Ark was born in 1873 in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Twenty-two years later, he visited China, his parents’ homeland, and was denied re-entry to the United States on the grounds that he was not a citizen.

And he was not eligible for citizenship Anti-China Law time.

He defended his case all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1898, that court ruledAt 6-2, Wong was quintessentially American.

It wasn’t just the 14th amendment that was at issue in the decision; he also revealed that the members of Congress who drafted the amendment knew it could apply not only to ex-slaves but also to immigrants.

A minority of judges criticized the decision at the time and since later some called it a selective reading of the drafters’ intent.

Critics insist the amendment was never intended to be so broadly applicable. And after 127 years, opponents of the decision found a president to try to challenge it.

“The privilege of United States citizenship is a priceless and profound gift,” said the preamble to Trump’s executive order, which now defines new categories of people who are ineligible for it.