Search this post Birthright Citizenship is Historic and Fundamental in the United States

Presidential candidate Donald Trump criticized birthright citizenship in the United States and suggested it should be repealed or restricted. Other Republican candidates joined in Trump’s criticism of birthright citizenship, often without showing much understating for the concept, the reason for its existence or its place in American history. This article will address three aspects of birthright citizenship as it pertains to the United States. First, what is birthright citizenship? Second, what is its legal basis? And third, how could it be changed or limited?

WHAT IS BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP?

In the leading United States Supreme Court decision regarding birthright citizenship,United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), the Court’s opinion provided a lengthy history of citizenship by place of birth in England, the American colonies and elsewhere, and compared citizenship by birth and its counterpart the rule of descent (Id.at 667).

Citizenship by birth, with two historic exceptions, is determined geographically, and is based on the premise that a person’s parents, whether themselves citizens or aliens, owed their allegiance to the ruler of the jurisdiction where they resided and were under the protection of such ruler; hence their children born within the realm of the ruler were likewise subject to the jurisdiction of the ruler; and by place of birth were deemed “natural born citizens” of that realm. The two exceptions were children of diplomats and children of hostile foreign occupiers of a part of the realm, because neither diplomats nor hostile occupiers considered themselves owing allegiance to the ruler where they physically resided.