Welp.
The Supreme Court has just ruled that "Birthright Citizenship" is a thing. If your parents are illegal, temporary, or a Chinese billionaire using a surrogate, you're just as American as George Washington.
This is a disastrous ruling for the Trump Administration as Roberts, Barrett, and the Court's liberals team up to strike down the Executive Order on the 14th Amendment.
Here's part of the dissent from Clarence Thomas, arguing that the ruling by the majority does not uphold the intent of the framers of the 14th:
After the Civil War, the Reconstruction Congress overruled Dred Scott, first with the Civil Rights Act of 1866, then with the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Both the Civil Rights Act and the Citizenship Clause guaranteed citizenship to persons born and domiciled in the United States regardless of their race. Neither guaranteed citizenship to persons who were not domiciled in the United States.
Blacks were entitled to citizenship because they were Americans. They had no other homeland, owed no allegiance to any foreign power, and were subject to no other authority. They "fought and bled in the same battles," "gained and gloried in the same victories," and were "liable to be called upon to defend [America] in time of war" alongside every other citizen. 2 Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass 256, 266 (P. Foner ed. 1950) (Douglass). The Citizenship Clause thus guaranteed them the "dignity and glory of American citizenship," so as to ensure that they would never be treated as second class under the law ...
The same could not be said for the children of foreign temporary visitors. Foreign temporary visitors were attached to their home country, lacked similar bonds to this country, and would not be called upon in time of war. Americans, consistent with their settler ethos, believed that citizens were the people who called a place home. Accordingly, domicile — a person's legal home — played a key role in both state and national citizenship in America. A person was a 'citizen' of the state where he had his 'domicil.' Barber v. Barber, 21 How. 582, 599 (1859). When foreigners temporarily visited, their 'national character' was unchanged. The Venus, 8 Cranch 253, 278 - 279 (1814). Such visitors were 'strangers,' not 'subjects."' Id., at 278. A person born here but domiciled in a foreign land was therefore considered "as much a stranger to the country as his father.'
Illegal aliens and temporary residents are subjects of their home countries and not subject to the jurisdiction of America, according to Thomas.
But the majority disagrees.
This will uphold the current reading of the law and maintain the status quo that anyone who is born on American soil is automatically an American.
Watch our latest video 👇
