Attorneys general from 22 states sued Tuesday to block President Donald Trump\u2019s move to end a century-old immigration practice known as birthright citizenship guaranteeing that US-born children are citizens regardless of their parents\u2019 status.
\nTrump\u2019s roughly 700-word executive order, issued late Monday, amounts to a fulfillment of something he\u2019s talked about during the presidential campaign. But whether it succeeds is far from certain amid what is likely to be a lengthy legal battle over the president\u2019s immigration policies and a constitutional right to citizenship.
\nThe Democratic attorneys general and immigrant rights advocates say the question of birthright citizenship is settled law and that while presidents have broad authority, they are not kings.
\n\u201cThe president cannot, with a stroke of a pen, write the 14th Amendment out of existence, period,\u201d New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin said.
\nThe White House said it\u2019s ready to face the states in court and called the lawsuits \u201cnothing more than an extension of the Left\u2019s resistance.\u201d
\n\u201cRadical Leftists can either choose to swim against the tide and reject the overwhelming will of the people, or they can get on board and work with President Trump,\u201d White House deputy press secretary Harrison Fields said.
\nConnecticut Attorney General William Tong, a US citizen by birthright and the nation\u2019s first Chinese American elected attorney general, said the lawsuit was personal for him.
\n\u201cThe 14th Amendment says what it means, and it means what it says \u2014 \u2014 if you are born on American soil, you are an American. Period. Full stop,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cThere is no legitimate legal debate on this question. But the fact that Trump is dead wrong will not prevent him from inflicting serious harm right now on American families like my own.\u201d
\nWhat is birthright citizenship?
\nAt issue in these cases is the right to citizenship granted to anyone born in the US, regardless of their parents\u2019 immigration status. People in the United States on a tourist or other visa or in the country illegally can become the parents of a citizen if their child is born here.
\nIt\u2019s enshrined in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, supporters say. But Trump and allies dispute the reading of the amendment and say there need to be tougher standards on becoming a citizen.
\nThe US is among about 30 countries where birthright citizenship \u2014 the principle of jus soli or \u201cright of the soil\u201d \u2014 is applied. Most are in the Americas, and Canada and Mexico are among them. Most other countries confer citizenship based on whether at least one parent \u2014 jus sanguinis, or \u201cright of blood\u201d \u2014 is a citizen, or have a modified form of birthright citizenship that may restrict automatic citizenship to children of parents who are on their territory legally.
\nWhat does Trump\u2019s order say?
\nTrump\u2019s order questions that the 14th Amendment extends citizenship automatically to anyone born in the United States.
\nRatified in 1868 in in the aftermath of the Civil War, the 14th Amendment says: \u201cAll 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.\u201d
\nTrump\u2019s order asserts that the children of noncitizens are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. It excludes the following people from automatic citizenship: those whose mothers were not legally in the United States and whose fathers were not US citizens or lawful permanent residents, and people whose mothers were in the country legally but on a temporary basis and whose fathers were not citizens or legal permanent residents.
\nIt goes on to bar federal agencies from recognizing the citizenship of people in those categories. It takes effect 30 days from Tuesday, on Feb. 19.
\nIt\u2019s not clear whether the order would retroactively affect birthright citizens. It says that federal agencies \u201cshall\u201d not issue citizenship documents to the people it excludes or accept other documents from states or local governments.
\nWhat is the history of the issue?
\nThe 14th Amendment did not always guarantee birthright citizenship to all US-born people. Congress did not authorize citizenship for all Native Americans born in the United States until 1924.
\nIn 1898 an important birthright citizenship case unfolded in the US Supreme Court. The court held that Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrants, was a US citizen because he was born in the country. After a trip abroad, he had faced denied reentry by the federal government on the grounds that he wasn\u2019t a citizen under the Chinese Exclusion Act.
\nBut some advocates of immigration restrictions have argued that while the case clearly applied to children born to parents who are both legal immigrants, it\u2019s less clear whether it applies to children born to parents without legal status.
\nThe issue of birthright citizenship arose in Arizona \u2014 one of the states suing to block Trump\u2019s order \u2014 during 2011 when Republican lawmakers considered a bill that would have challenged automatic birthright citizenship. Supporters said then that the goal wasn\u2019t to get every state in the nation to enact such a law, but rather to bring the dispute to the courts. The bill never made it out of the Legislature.
\nWhat has the reaction to Trump\u2019s order been?
\nIn addition to the states, the District of Columbia and San Francisco, immigrant rights groups are also suing to stop Trump\u2019s order.
\nChapters of the American Civil Liberties Union in New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts along with other immigrant rights advocates filed a suit in New Hampshire federal court.
\nThe suit asks the court to find the order to be unconstitutional. It highlights the case of a woman identified as \u201cCarmen,\u201d who is pregnant but is not a citizen. The lawsuit says she 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 the father of her expected child has no immigration status either, the suit says.
\n\u201cStripping children of the \u2018priceless treasure\u2019 of citizenship is a grave injury,\u201d the suit says. \u201cIt denies them the full membership in US society to which they are entitled.\u201d
\nIn addition to New Jersey and the two cities, California, Massachusetts, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin joined the lawsuit to stop the order.
\nArizona, Illinois, Oregon and Washington filed a separate suit in federal court challenging Trump\u2019s order as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Attorneys general from 22 states sued Tuesday to block President Donald Trump\u2019s move to end a century-old immigration practice known as birthright citizenship guaranteeing that US-born children are citizens regardless of their parents\u2019 status. Trump\u2019s roughly 700-word executive order, issued late Monday, amounts to a fulfillment of something he\u2019s talked about during the presidential campaign. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":75935,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75921"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75936,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75921\/revisions\/75936"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}