The Trump administration just dropped its brief in the birthright citizenship case heading to the Supreme Court next month, and the legal argument is exactly what you’d expect from a president who actually reads the Constitution instead of pretending it means whatever activist judges want it to mean. According to the Trump administration’s brief, the case centers on Trump’s executive order directing federal agencies to stop handing out citizenship like participation trophies to children born to illegal migrants and birth tourists. You know, the kind of people who fly here specifically to have an “anchor baby” and game our immigration system.
The administration’s argument is straightforward: the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause was written to grant citizenship to freed slaves and their children—people who actually owed allegiance to the United States. It wasn’t a blank check for anyone who manages to cross the border nine months pregnant. As stated in the brief, “Children of temporarily present or illegal aliens do not qualify because their parents are not domiciled in, and thus do not owe the requisite allegiance to the United States,” adding that “Temporarily present aliens are by definition not domiciled here, while illegal aliens lack the legal capacity to form such a domicile.”
Trump imposed this order last year specifically to deter the birth tourism industry and stop illegal migrants from using American-born children as a backdoor to permanent residency. It’s common sense policy that every other developed nation figured out decades ago, as reported by various immigration policy analyses. Oral arguments are scheduled for April 1. No, that’s not a joke—though the idea that we need the Supreme Court to tell us the 14th Amendment doesn’t apply to people who aren’t even supposed to be here is getting pretty close to one.
The left will scream about this, of course. They always do. But ask yourself: why is the United States one of the only countries on Earth that still grants birthright citizenship to anyone who happens to be born on our soil? Canada does it. A few Latin American nations. That’s basically the list. Even France and Germany—the left’s favorite examples of enlightened democracies—got rid of this policy years ago, according to international reports.
And this isn’t about hating immigrants. It’s about having a coherent immigration system that doesn’t reward lawbreaking. Is that really too much to ask? Providence watches over the bold.
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