(October 31, 2018)—In an interview preview released early Tuesday, Donald Trump announced his plans to issue an executive order ending the Fourteenth Amendment’s constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship. Any executive order purporting to end birthright citizenship would be patently unconstitutional, violating the clear meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment and 120 years of Supreme Court precedent.
It would also be morally wrong. The Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause was drafted at the end of the Civil War to guarantee freed people the basic rights of citizenship, and ensure that, moving forward, all people born in the United States shared in these rights. We have been fighting to realize the Fourteenth Amendment’s promise ever since. Ending birthright citizenship would be an unfathomable step backward, causing irreparable harm to immigrant families and our society as a whole. If birthright citizenship were repealed, it would increase the number of undocumented adults, youth, and children for decades to come—creating a caste of people with few rights and perpetuating economic and racial inequities across generations.
“Ending birthright citizenship would legally enshrine a new era of white supremacy,” said Megan Martin, Vice President of Public Policy at CSSP. “It is an unacceptable attack on families and our values as a country and we cannot, as a nation, let this happen.”
CSSP is committed to creating inclusive and thriving communities for every family. We oppose this and any other policy proposal that advances a racist, xenophobic agenda and disregards the most basic rights and needs of children, youth, and families.
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