Under present law, with a tiny number of exceptions, every child born in the United States is a citizen, regardless of the citizenship or immigration status of the child's parents.
Projection showing effect of various birthright citizenship repeal
scenarios. © Migration Policy Institute
This right comes from the Fourteenth Amendment, which was enacted to overturn the hideous
Dredd Scott decision, and to put in place, after a bitter civil war, the constitutional principle that all persons born on U.S. soil would be citizens, and no political body had the authority to interfere with that principle.
Of course, that is no matter to the Steven Kings (R-Nincompoop) of the world, who see this as some kind of boon to the worthless moochers and so forth who don't vote Republican. They propose several scenarios to "fix" the Fourteenth Amendment. All share one feature, and that is that birth in the United States alone would not be sufficient to confer citizenship. They vary in the details as to what further is required.
Option A is the least restrictive, and it is represented in the various acts introduced by Rep. King and co-sponsored by various Republican dingalings every Congress as a bill to “clarify” the Fourteenth Amendment. This would require citizenship to be established by birth in the U.S. and at least one parent would have to be a citizen or lawful permanent resident of the United States. Notably the legislation would apply prospectively only, presumably the stench of retroactive deprivation of citizenship of millions of people is too much even for wingnut nostrils.
Option B would disregard the father’s citizenship status, and would permit citizenship of a U.S. born child only if the mother were a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident.
Option C would require both the mother and the father of the child to be U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents.
Should any of these proposals become law, they would permanently alter the legal landscape for every person in the United States. A birth certificate would no longer become sufficient evidence of citizenship. The USCIS presently issues, for a fee of $600, certificates of citizenship for children who are born abroad to U.S. citizens, or adopted by them. USCIS receives approximately 72,000 applications for these certificates every year. (source. Presumably something like this would be necessary for every child born in the United States, although with almost 4,000,000 births in the United States every year, some kind of ramp up of the program might be necessary.
Problems ripple through generations.
Generations are counting on you -- not if the wingnuts get their way.
The problem becomes more acute as generations move on. For the first generation under the hypothetical new regime, proof of citizenship under Option A would require a birth certificate of a parent born before the effective date of the legislation. However, in about twenty years, with the second generation under the new regime coming along, a child would have to show that a grandparent had been a citizen or lawful permanent resident.
In about 40 years, with children born after the effective date of the legislation becoming grandparents, it would start becoming necessary to show that at least one of the child’s greatgrandparents had been a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident at the timethat the child’s grandparent was born.
This is starting to sound like an immigration lawyer’s dream!
Option B gets even worse (or better, if you’re an immigration lawyer) because 40 years after the enactment of the statute, we’ll enter a phase where only if the maternal grandmother’s mother can be shown to have been a citizen or lawful permanent resident will her great-grandchild be able to be a citizen, even though that great-grandchild’s mother, father and all grandparents might have been born in the United States.
And option C dials it up to 11 40 years post-enactment, when children will start to have to show that their two parents, their four grandparents, and their 8 great grandparents will all have been citizens or lawful permanent residents. Any failure of proof of status of any of these generations means no citizenship for the child.
Back in 2010, the Migration Policy Institute ran some demographic projections about the effect of the various proposals, which they summarized in the chart at the top of this post (I’m hoping this is fair use!) In a nutshell, they found:
— Under all options there would be a rapid increase in the number of “unauthorized”, or in plain words, “illegal” children in the first fifteen years of the law.
— this would level out at about year 15 or so, with “illegal” children constituting 4% of the overall population of children. Approximately 3 out of every 4 “illegal” children will have been born in the United States under Option B
— Options B and C would quickly result in a much greater number of “illegal” children. By year 15, under Option B, 5% of children would be “illegal” and the figure would be 7% under option C. There would be some plateauing under Options B and C from year 15 to 35, but starting then, B and C really start to wreak havoc. In year 40, Option B would make 7% of children “illegal” and Option C would produce a starting figure of 12%. In both cases the vast majority of such children would have been born in the United States.
Permanent underclass -- here we come?
FSA photo, Pie Town, NM, 1941, children singing, many have no shoes.
It’s often been said that repeal of birthright right citizenship would
result in a permanent underclass in America. But this is a feature, not a bug.
Let’s take for example, Hans von Spakovsky, who makes his living degrading the right of various non-white persons to vote, who proposed Option C proposed Option C back on 1/14/11. Ensconced not surprisingly in the Heritage Foundation, von Spakovsky stated:
It is just plain wrong to claim that the children born of parents temporarily in the country as students or tourists are automatically U.S. citizens: They do not meet the 14th Amendment’s jurisdictional allegiance obligations. They are, in fact, subject to the political jurisdiction (and allegiance) of the country of their parents. The same applies to the children of illegal aliens because children born in the United States to foreign citizens are citizens of their parents’ home country.
Of course, if Von Spakowsky got his way in a very short time we would have a permanent underclass in this country, of people who could not vote even though they were born here in the United States. But as I said, that's a feature, not a bug.
What's the real goal?
Sen. Ted Bilbo uncharacteristically reading a book
Racists have had to change their rhetoric since his time.
Now, I don’t expect that birthright citizenship will ever be repealed in the United States. Far too much is at stake. I do think it’s interesting that so-called “conservatives” wish to wrest away from millions and millions their citizenship, and turn this over to the Ministry of Homeland Security.
I think the real purpose of the proposals to rescind birthright citizenship is (again) as one of the numerous markers and code words used by the wingnuts. They can’t make overtly racist appeals like good old Senator Theodore Bilbo.
But they can get their message well across through the usual claptrap about “real Americans” (hint: if you have to ask who those are, you aren’t one) and this legal rubbish about “clarification” of the 14th amendment.
We all know EXACTLY who they are talking about who shouldn’t be citizens, and let me tell you, it’s not people whose folks came from Sweden or Canada that the wingnuts are worried about.