Michael Anton

Opinion contributor

Birthright citizenship is foolish, uncommon and unconstitutional. Let’s take those in reverse order.

Many assume that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires granting birthright citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants. That’s wrong.

The 14th Amendment was intended to guarantee the citizenship of freed black slaves and their descendants. Before the Civil War, there had been no federal definition of citizenship. After the war, some states tried to use that fact to deny citizenship to freed slaves. In response, Congress first passed a law and later the amendment — subsequently ratified by all then-existing states — to clarify the issue forever.

Framers didn't intend for birthright citizenship

The amendment specifies that “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.” If the framers simply intended to make citizens of any person born in U.S. territory, then that central clause has no purpose.

But they didn’t, and it does. It’s there to clarify that simply being born here is not enough. An early draft of the amendment lacked the jurisdiction clause, prompting some to ask whether the amendment amounted to a grant of citizenship to anyone born here regardless of status. The drafters immediately answered no: Only those “not owing allegiance to anybody else” and “not subject to some foreign power”are automatically granted birthright citizenship.

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Hence the Constitution sets two criteria for citizenship: birth or naturalization, and subject to our jurisdiction. Ignoring the latter is therefore unconstitutional.

So how did we get where we are? It’s a long story but in brief, one side of the political debate long ago decided, for its own advantage, to pretend as if the amendment doesn’t mean what it says. There is nothing in the Constitution or in statute law that gives the federal government authority to grant citizenship to people not entitled to it. Federal agencies simply do it, the same way they do so many things they have no authority to do. It’s one of thousands of examples of our runaway, undemocratic, unelected bureaucracy acting in concert with liberal interests. There’s no reason why the elected president couldn’t tell the agencies that report to him to stop doing something nobody ever told them to do in the first place.

Birthright citizenship is rare because it's foolish

Birthright citizenship is not common. Of the 197 countries in the world, only 33 honor birthright citizenship.

Birthright citizenship is rare because it is foolish. In our country, for instance, it has led to ridiculous abuses such as “birth tourism.” Relatively affluent women spend tens of thousands of dollars to have their babies in America so they can take junior home with a U.S. passport and citizenship, guaranteeing the whole family American residency whenever they want it. Partially in response to this abuse, eight countries have curtailed or ended the practice in recent years; zero has adopted it. Canada — the only other wealthy country that allows birthright citizenship — is debating it just as we are.

President Trump has wisely said that “if you don’t have borders, you don’t have a country.” Similarly, if breaking our law is sufficient to make someone a citizen, then the citizenship of all lawful citizens is weakened and the meaning of citizenship is trivialized.

Michael Anton is a lecturer in politics and research fellow at the Hillsdale College Kirby Center and a former national security official in the Trump administration.