President Donald Trump said that it would be “devastating” if the U.S. Supreme Court decided to rule against his January order that blocks automatic birthright citizenship for children born to illegal immigrants, adding that the United States can’t afford it.
Trump told Politico in a video interview released on Tuesday that it “would be a devastating decision if we lose that case” because the United States “cannot afford to house tens of millions of people” who were automatically granted citizenship even though their parents were illegal immigrants.
The president said that the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which was ratified in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, was meant for the “babies of slaves.”
“And if you look at the dates on the case, it was exactly having to do with the Civil War,” Trump said. “That case was not meant for some rich person coming from another country, dropping … putting a foot in our country, and all of a sudden their whole family becomes, you know, United States citizens.”
The case before the Supreme Court, he suggested, should be viewed through the lens of those who drafted the amendment during the post-Civil War Reconstruction Era in the mid-to-late 19th century.
“It’s that little period of time, and people now are starting to understand that,” the president said.
The 14th Amendment came into being in 1868, just a few years after the end of the Civil War.
Section 1 of the amendment states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” The amendment was created in response to a Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857 that stated people of African descent couldn’t be considered American citizens.
Meanwhile, Section 4 of the 14th Amendment includes a reference to slavery and the war itself, stating that “neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.”
Decades later, the Supreme Court in 1898 ruled 6–2 in United States v. Wong Kim Ark that the first section of the 14th Amendment means that anyone who is born in the United States, even the children of noncitizen immigrants like Wong—a man born to Chinese nationals but denied reentry into the country—should be considered American citizens.
Then-Supreme Court Chief Justice Melville Fuller was among the two justices who dissented, arguing against automatic birthright citizenship and claiming Wong was not “completely subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States due to his parentage.
On this first day in office, Trump signed an order that aims to end automatic citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants. It has not gone into effect, however, due to court rulings.
“But the Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States,” the Jan. 20 order stated. “The Fourteenth Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.'”
Multiple court cases have been brought against the executive order, with several federal judges ruling against the Trump administration. The Supreme Court agreed to take up the case earlier this month.
The United States is one of around 30 countries that offer automatic birthright citizenship to anyone born in the country.
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