What the U.S. Constitution giveth, Trump wants to taketh away
SAN DIEGO -- To take Americans' minds off his problems, President Trump offers another shiny object: birthright citizenship.
The legal concept is jus soli, Latin for "the right of the soil." In the United States -- and more than 30 other countries, including Canada and most of Latin America -- if you're born there, you're a citizen. This includes the children of illegal immigrants.
In about two dozen countries -- mainly in Asia, Europe and the Middle East -- at least one parent must have legal status for a child born on their soil to get citizenship. Only two nations -- India and Malta -- are so strict that they deny citizenship to children born on their soil unless at least one parent is a citizen.
Thanks to the 14th Amendment, the United States has it right. But what the U.S. Constitution giveth, Trump wants to taketh away.
You ought to keep 10 things in mind:
-- When conservatives parrot the talking point that the Supreme Court "has never ruled" on whether the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment applies to the children of undocumented immigrants, they're missing the point. There are reams of issues that the court has never decided because they're ridiculous. Note that the court has also never ruled on unicorns. This could be one of those issues.
-- The underlying assumption of those who want to deny citizenship to the children of the undocumented seems to be that U.S. citizenship is extremely valuable. But if they want to be stingy about who becomes a citizen, then why do we give the privilege away automatically to the native-born who did nothing to earn it?
-- Most illegal immigrants come from Mexico and Central America. So Trump's attack on birthright citizenship should be seen as just another hate-filled strike against the nation's 58 million Latinos, many of whom get up and go to work everyday to help keep America great.
-- It's simply false to say that "no other country" confers birthright citizenship. Besides, what the folks who say that likely mean is that few countries in Europe offer it. Who cares? The United States hasn't followed Europe's lead on much of anything since the Marshall Plan. When was the last time you heard of the French Dream?
-- Trump warns that U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants have the "benefits" of citizenship. This implies that they are takers. But countless studies show that immigrants are just as likely as the U.S.-born to be productive members of society, if not more so.
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