
Roving Periscope: Trump’s fiat on citizenship draws strong protests
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Hours after his second Inauguration on Monday, US President Donald Trump’s controversial decisions were challenged in courts and the opposition from elected lawmakers also mounted.
Law officials from at least 22 states in the US sued on Tuesday to block President Trump’s move to end a century-old immigration practice as birthright citizenship that guaranteed that US-born children will be citizens regardless of their parents’ status, the media reported on Wednesday.
Ironically, Trump’s grandfather migrated from Germany a century ago. Likewise, his Man Friday, Elon Musk, also migrated from South Africa.
Indian-American lawmakers have strongly opposed the President’s executive order.
“No matter what Donald Trump says or does, birthright citizenship has and will be the law of the land. I will fight to protect it at all costs,” Indian-American Congressman Shri Thanedar said.
The move is likely to hit not only illegal immigrants from around the world but also students and professionals from India.
On Monday, in the opening hours of his second, non-consecutive term as the US President, Trump signed an order declaring that future children born to undocumented immigrants would no longer be treated as citizens. The order would extend even to the children of some mothers in the country legally but temporarily, such as foreign students or tourists.
Trump’s 700-word executive order was in tune with his promise during last year’s election campaign. Whether it succeeds is far from certain amid what is likely to be a lengthy legal battle over his immigration policies and a constitutional right to citizenship, the reports said.
The Democratic attorneys general and immigrant rights advocates said the question of birthright citizenship is settled law and that while the US Presidents have broad authority, they are not kings.
“The President cannot, with a stroke of a pen, write the 14th Amendment out of existence. Period,” New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin said, according to the media reports.
The White House said it’s ready to face the states in court and called the lawsuits “nothing more than an extension of the Left’s resistance.”
“Radical 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,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Harrison Fields said.
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, a US citizen by birthright and the nation’s first Chinese American elected attorney general said the lawsuit was personal to him.
“The 14th Amendment says what it means, and it means what it says —- if you are born on American soil, you are an American. Period. Full stop,” he said.
“There 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.
At issue in these cases is the right to citizenship granted to anyone born in the US, regardless of their parent’s 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.
The USA is among about 30 countries where birthright citizenship — the principle of jus soli or “right of the soil” — is applied. Most are in the Americas, and Canada and Mexico are among them. Several other countries confer citizenship based on whether at least one parent — jus sanguinis, or “right of blood” — is a citizen, or has a modified form of birthright citizenship that may restrict automatic citizenship to children of parents who are on their territory legally.
President Trump’s order questions that the 14th Amendment extends citizenship automatically to anyone born in the United States.