US President Donald Trump plans to end birthright citizenship

Washington: US President Donald Trump plans to end the right to citizenship for the children of non-citizens and unauthorized immigrants born on US soil in what is arguably the most far-reaching move to staunch the growth of immigrant population in the United States.

Under current laws, anyone born in the United States, including children of non-citizens, and including illegal immigrants, automatically qualify to become an American citizen. But Trump will none of it; he wants to end the so-called “anchor babies” and “chain migration.”

“We’re the only country in the world where a person comes in, has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States for 85 years with all of those benefits,” Trump said in an interview for “Axios on HBO.”
“It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. And it has to end,” he continued.

Thousands of children of Indian parents, including those born to guest worker visa and visitor visa holders, automatically become US citizens each year. Under current laws, any baby born in the United States of America, regardless of the residential status of the new born baby’s parents, is considered to be a citizen of the United States by birth and entitled to all the rights available to any US citizen. Once the baby is born, an American birth certificate will be issued.

In fact, some foreigners plan their travel in such a way that they give birth in the US There has long been speculation that immigration hardliners in the Trump administration want to can this route, but policy experts have said it will run into Congressional opposition and it might not withstand legal challenges.
But Trump said he believes it can be done with an executive order. “It was always told to me that you needed a constitutional amendment. Guess what? You don’t,” Trump told Axios, which first broke the story, declaring he can do it by executive order.

“You can definitely do it with an Act of Congress. But now they’re saying I can do it just with an executive order,” he added.
The legal challenges to such an executive order would force the courts to decide on a constitutional debate over the 14th Amendment, which says, “All 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.”

Immigration hardliners have argued that the 14th Amendment was only intended to provide citizenship to children born in the US to lawful permanent residents — not to unauthorized immigrants or those on temporary visas.
Michael Anton, a former national security official in the Trump administration, recently argued in the Washington Post that Trump could, via executive order, “specify to federal agencies that the children of noncitizens are not citizens” simply because they were born on US soil.

Trump first spoke about the scrapping birthright citizenship in 2015 in a Fox News interview. “What happens is, they’re in Mexico, they’re going to have a baby, they move over here for a couple of days, they have the baby,” he said,

Immigration advocates suspect the Trump move, backed by hardliners such as his advisors Stephen Miller, is aimed at arresting the so-called “browning of America” that some experts say will be politically disadvantageous to Republicans. Although initial chatter about doing away with birthright citizenship was restricted to children of undocumented immigrants, the more hardline elements on the right want it scrapped for even guest workers on temporary work visas.

Trumps move came even as his administration announced it was sending more than 5,000 active-duty troops to the southern border, ostensibly to stop an immigrant caravan coming through Mexico. Many liberal critics see Trump’s muscular response as part of his strategy to energize his anti-immigrant base on the eve of the November Congressional elections.