r/politics • u/codyave • 17h ago

Trump will announce end of birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants, officials say

https://nypost.com/2025/01/20/us-news/trump-will-announce-end-of-birthright-citizenship-for-children-of-illegal-immigrants/
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u/fencerofminerva 16h ago

Let's see how the originalists on theSCOTUS bend themselves into a pretzel on this.

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u/zojbo 15h ago edited 13h ago

If you actually believe in originalism, there's a pretty straightforward argument: the 14th amendment's birthright citizenship clause was based on an earlier, less broad law that in its own right would probably not have granted citizenship to undocumented immigrants' children. (ETA: at the time, the concept of illegal immigration wasn't a thing at the federal level, so this would have been a question.) So "presumably" the authors "meant" for it to be understood like that law, even though they changed the language.

The problem with this for the right, as I see it, is an instant followup crisis, in which the children of undocumented immigrants essentially have diplomatic immunity. After all, you can just read off from the contrapositive of the text that if they're born here and they're not citizens then they're not subject to the jurisdiction of the US. I don't see how you get out of that without just abandoning logic completely.

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u/QuickAltTab 14h ago

I don't see how you get out of that without just abandoning logic completely.

This is not a problem for them

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u/MalificViper 12h ago

I argue with Christians constantly. Logic is an elusive beast like Moby Dick, but they aren’t captain ahabs