There’re quotation marks around the word “plan” for a reason. Most lawmakers and lawyers — including House Speaker Paul Ryan — agree that President Trump can’t act unilaterally [MM1] end birthright citizenship guaranteed in the fourteenth amendment, according to the BBC. Some political analysts think Trump reignited talk about ending birthright citizenship as a way to help the Republican party during the midterm elections. Others say the president would act on this claim.
Here are three reasons why the idea of Trump ending birthright citizenship should bother you:
It’s a gross overreach of power
The Constitution is a big deal. It protects the rights of Americans and sets up the basis of our governmental structures. One presidents should not — and frankly is not — allowed to change it with and executive order. Yet, this is how President Trump told Axios he will implement this plan. In an interview with Axios, Trump said, “It was always told to me that you needed a constitutional amendment. Guess what? You don’t.” He later said, “It’s in the process, it’ll happen with an executive order.”
If the President does succeed to make this constitutional change, it puts into question how citizenship can be determined and sets a precedent for making other changes. Who’s to say that other amendments won’t be changed by executive order? Does one person get to impact things like: who gets to vote, unreasonable search and seizure, freedom of the press? Changing the Constitution is not a unilateral decision for a reason. And not to get totally dystopian, but one of the first acts of the government in “The Handmaid’s Tale” was to get rid of the Constitution. Just saying.
It’s born out of xenophobia
The President wants to get rid of birthright citizenship because it would be the toughest [MM6] act he’s done to stop illegal immigration, according to the BBC and Axios. President Trump has been known to demonize immigrants, specifically those from Latin American countries. During his presidential campaign, he said that Mexico was purposely sending rapists and criminals into the U.S. In response to the caravan of migrants approaching the U.S. southern border, Trump said that these are “tough people” at a campaign rally and told reporters that immigrants who threw rocks at military members at the border would be treated as having weapons — insinuating that they may be shot.
And yet all of Trump’s “hard” stance on immigration doesn’t seem to apply when it’s inconvenient for him.
As TV personality Trevor Noah points out, President Trump’s children have mothers who are immigrants. Do his children lose citizenship? In a January 2018 article, NBC reported that Trump hotels and townhouses are a destination for Russian mothers who travel to the U.S. for the specific purpose of having children that are U.S. citizens. Although there’s no proof that the Trump family directly benefits from the birth tourism industry, shouldn’t a president who is so stoutly against birthright citizenship and chain migration, have a problem with participants staying on his property? Or does it only matter to him based on where those immigrants are from?
It’s part of Trump’s larger “anything it takes to win” rhetoric
According to Vox, there’s no indication that President Trump’s executive order has even been drafted yet. That’s probably why some analysts don’t think he’ll act on the claim. But even if he doesn’t, that’s a problem. It shows, as we have seen, that President Trump will do whatever it takes to be “win” even if it’s a lie. According to USA Today and the BBC, at least 30 other countries have birthright citizenship, mostly in the Western hemisphere as a result of colonization. President Trump told Axios that “no other country” has birthright citizenship.
The reason Trump is saying this is because he wants the Republican party to win the midterms. The problem with that is he’s willing to lie — and at what stakes — to do so. The claim that he’s going to end birthright citizenship should concern you because it’s further evidence that he doesn’t really care what he has to say or do to “win.” Our country and the Constitution shouldn’t be a game.
