Inheriting America? The Battle Over Birthright Citizenship

Last Tuesday, just one day after President Trump took office, California’s Attorney General, Rob Bonta, filed a lawsuit against President Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship.[1] He represents just one of 18 states and 2 cities that all filed suits against the President Trump over this issue, arguing that ordering to end birthright citizenship is unconstitutional.[2] In California specifically, our Legislature has allocated $25 million for this legal battle, which they sent over to Bonta’s office.[3]

You might be wondering why I’m writing about this issue instead of the others I listed, given this isn’t a matter of California policy or a specific law passed in our state. And really, I wonder that too – because I wonder why our state Attorney General – who oversees the enforcement of our state laws for the good of our citizens – is spending his time and our taxpayer money on a lawsuit against the President, whose executive order does not affect citizens. Bonta argues that this directly affects the children of undocumented immigrants in California, especially since California has the highest number of illegal immigrants of any state across the country,[4] making it a relevant fight for him to enter.

Obviously, there is a lot here to cover – like how DOES this affect California, what is birthright citizenship, what does President Trump’s executive order mean, does it have legal basis, how do we think about this issue, and, most importantly, what does this mean for you today.

What is Birthright Citizenship?

We need to back up and first define what is even going on here. What is birthright citizenship?

Birthright citizenship is a legal principle that means anyone who is born within the United States is automatically a United States citizen.[5] In effect, from the moment of your birth, if you are born on American soil, then you are American.

Where does this come from and how long has it been legal precedent in our country? Birthright citizenship comes from the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which reads, “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.”[6] This amendment was ratified in 1868 during the Reconstruction Era, following the Civil War.[7] The context of this amendment is important to understand, because it becomes crucial in discussing its legal basis later on.

All the way back in 1790, the very first naturalization law was passed in our new nation. This law granted citizenship to free white persons who had lived in the US for two years and were of good character.[8] This did not extend to slaves or Native Americans. Years later, in 1857, the Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott v. Sanford case that the Plaintiff, Dred Scott, was not a citizen because of his African heritage. The ruling set the legal precedent that no African descendant in America could become a US citizen, even if they had been born in the US.[9] This, obviously, was a major injustice. Dred Scott and other slaves of African descent were denied citizenship solely on the base of their race.

Then came the Civil War, from 1861 to 1865. This led to the Emancipation Proclamation, signed by President Lincoln in 1863 – which freed all slaves in the Confederate States. It didn’t officially end slavery in our country yet, but it was a bold first step, which would pave the way for the Thirteenth Amendment to be passed in 1865 – abolishing slavery across the country.[10] After slaves were finally granted freedom legally, there were still questions as to how to integrate the Confederate and Union states back together, and how to ensure that those who were formerly enslaved were not continually outcast. We still needed to define the rights of all men, regardless of race or status. As a result, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which would define citizenship and equal rights for all people.[11] The last step was to make sure that the protections in the Civil Rights Act could not be overturned by any court at any time – which the only way to ensure that is to enshrine its protections into the Constitution itself. And so, in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, guaranteeing equal protection under the law for all people, preventing the deprivation of life, liberty, and property, and granting citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States – regardless of skin color and including former slaves.[12]

We can see then that the context and purpose of birthright citizenship in the 14th amendment was to prevent any state or the federal government from denying citizenship to any person living in and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States based on their background, skin color, social status, or heritage. It guaranteed not only that adults could gain citizenship, but that their children would be citizens as well, and rightfully so given that this country was their nation and the nation of their parents.

Legal Interpretation of Birthright Citizenship

So, that was 1868, what has happened since then? Has this been challenged or upheld in courts in the 157 years since?

There is one legal case that really defined what birthright citizenship would mean and would look like across our country, and it was the landmark case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark. Wong Kim was born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrant parents, who lived in the United States as legal permanent residents under the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act at the time of his birth. His parents moved back to China when he was 16 years old, but Wong Kim stayed in the United States. Five years later, he travelled to China to visit his parents, and upon his return to the United States, where he was born and had lived all his life, he was denied reentry on the grounds that he was not a US citizen.[13]

The case went all the way up to the Supreme Court, which ruled 6-2 in Wong Kim’s favor. He was considered a citizen, they argued, under the citizenship clause in the Fourteenth Amendment. Listen to the ruling of the majority opinion on birthright citizenship:

“Chinese persons, born out of the United States, remaining subjects of the Emperor of China, and not having become citizens of the United States, are entitled to the protection of, and owe allegiance to, the United States so long as they are permitted by the United States to reside here, and are ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof’ in the same sense as all other aliens residing in the United States.”[14]

This laid the groundwork for how birthright citizenship would be understood in our country to this day, and this case really was the last legal challenge brought against the amendment in the years after its passage.

President Trump’s Executive Order

What did President Trump sign in his executive order about birthright citizenship, how would it be applied, and who would it impact?

The executive order signed on his first day in office is titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.” The order acknowledges that the origin of birthright citizenship came out of overturning of the Dred Scott legal case, and it makes clear that the Scott case was shameful by the Court as those of African descent should not have been excluded from citizenship based on their race. However, it poses a challenge to the common interpretation of the citizenship clause by asserting, “The Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States.”[15]

Why does it say that? Well, there are a few exceptions to sweeping birthright citizenship. One example is the children of diplomats. If the child of a foreign diplomat is born in the United States, they are not granted American citizenship. Why not? It all comes down to the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Foreign diplomats and their families are granted diplomatic immunity under international law, excluding them from subjection to the jurisdiction of the United States.[16] As a result, their children are not granted citizenship if they are born here.

This is the most common exception, but there other two other, rarer instances in which birthright citizenship would not apply. One is children of enemy forces, meaning if forces overtook part of the United States without the consent of the US government, then children born to those enemy forces would not be granted citizenship under the principle that they do not abide by the laws of our country – given their very rule in our country would be unlawful. And lastly, children born into sovereign Native American tribes were also not granted citizenship at the time of the Fourteenth Amendment, given they too were not ruled under the jurisdiction of United States federal law.[17]

These exceptions are the basis for what President Trump is outlining in his executive order – that the Fourteenth Amendment does not universally extend citizenship to everyone born in the United States. There are agreed-upon exceptions, all hinging on the concept of abiding under US jurisdiction. This is critical, because this is the legal basis for which he is making his argument.

The executive order then details what it is looking to do – it is ordering that in the same way birthright citizenship is not extended to the exceptions we just discussed, it should also exclude the children of illegal immigrants who are not living in our country via the legal immigration process in place. It states:

“Among the categories of individuals born in the United States and not subject to the jurisdiction thereof, the privilege of United States citizenship does not automatically extend to persons born in the United States:  (1) when that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth, or (2) when that person’s mother’s presence in the United States at the time of said person’s birth was lawful but temporary (such as, but not limited to, visiting the United States under the auspices of the Visa Waiver Program or visiting on a student, work, or tourist visa) and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.”

What this means, is that if a baby is born in the United States, but neither of the baby’s parents are a lawful, permanent resident, then that child is not granted American citizenship as a matter of birthright. To clarify on the residency front: a permanent resident is a green card holder. This means that student visas (F-1), work visas (H1-B), tourist visas (B-2) and others, would NOT qualify as permanent status, and would not grant their children birthright citizenship. So, take my personal example. I am an American citizen, and my husband is a green card holder. Our children will be citizens. If we had a child while my husband was still on his H1-B visa, our children would still be citizens because I am a citizen. If we had a child while my husband was on an H1-B visa and I was NOT a US citizen, also here on a work or student visa, then our children would NOT be citizens, as we both would belong under foreign jurisdictions. Make sense?

Why is this coming up now? Well, it is no secret that President Trump is staunchly against illegal immigration, and the massive influx in border crossings during the Biden Administration created incentive for expectant mothers to cross the border illegally while pregnant to guarantee their child American citizenship. This is an issue that has never risen to the levels before in history that it has in the last few years, and so President Trump’s executive order is a concerted effort to do what the name of the order says – to protect the meaning and value of American citizenship. But even beyond immigration at the southern border, there is also an entire industry for coming to America just for the purpose of having a baby – known as birth tourism.

The Center for Immigration Studies estimated back in 2015 that were as many as 36,000 birth tourists traveling to the United States solely for the purpose of granting their child American citizenship every year[18] – and that’s before the influx of illegal immigration that we have seen during the Biden Presidency. Birth tourists come from all over the world, with China and Taiwan being at the forefront of the industry. Other countries include Korea, Nigeria, Turkey, and Russia, and of course Mexico.[19] The exact breakdown of just how many women are crossing the border for purposes of giving birth here are hard to find, considering the practice is a relatively covert one, but a study from way back in 2002 found that 10.4% of Mexican women crossing the border were doing so to give birth.[20]

We’ve all seen the headlines. In 2021 a migrant mother swam across the Rio Grande while in labor to give birth in Brownsville, Texas.[21] A year before that, another migrant woman snuck across the Rio Grande at 38 weeks pregnant, where she was apprehended by border control and put back on a bus to Mexico.[22] There are countless other stories of women travelling late in their pregnancies in the hopes that if they can just make it across the border to give birth, they will have attained American citizenship for their child.

What President Trump, and the many conservatives who support amending birthright citizenship, are trying to do is address the unique situation that our country is in today, and the ways that our Constitution has been abused by illegal migrants. It is all rooted in the purpose of the citizenship clause – the Trump Administration is arguing that the purpose of it was never to grant blanket citizenship to the children of people crossing our border illegally. It was to right the wrong of seeing African Americans NOT as Americans, solely because of their skin color. That is an entirely different purpose than birthright citizenship is used for today. This executive order would not affect babies born to citizens of the United States, nor to permanent legal residents; it would only apply to illegal immigrants, who have broken the law to come to our country, and temporary residents, who it could be argued still owe allegiance to their country of origin until they go through the process to remain here permanently.

Why Should We Care?

Before giving you my analysis and response to this debate, I want to briefly cover why I felt compelled to write about this. I recognize, as I mentioned at the beginning of this article, that this isn’t necessarily California policy – but it does affect California, it clearly is a priority of our government to put funding toward it, and as a state with a large immigrant population, it will affect the people who live here. I think it is really important that we are all equipped with facts, and with truth, in the coming days, months, and years of this administration. Our state leaders don’t like President Trump, and they showed us in his last term just how eager and willing they were to fight him at every turn. Now, just two days into his presidency, they have already begun a legal battle that they are allocating millions of your taxpayer dollars toward.

If we aren’t informed about the issues being fought by our state, if we aren’t equipped with the truth about what is really happening and what it means for our country, then it’s easy to read the headlines and believe what they say. It’s easy to get lazy, or complacent, or even jaded about hot topic issues, like immigration. But immigration is an important issue – it’s important for the sake of ensuring that we are a country that is fair to all, not discriminating on the basis of race or sex or religion, welcoming to those who will come here legally; it’s also important for the sake of national sovereignty and protecting our borders – keeping American citizens, especially American women, safe from criminals who would take advantage of our border policies to enter illegally, and preserving the values that we stand on as a country, values of democracy, freedom, and innovation.

We must know what we think, even HOW to think, on and about these issues, and refuse to be manipulated by accusations, flashy headlines, and downright lies floating around in the media. You should have all the facts in front of you to make up your mind, without guilt-tripping, emotional manipulation, or toxic empathy clouding your judgment. Plus, if our Attorney General thinks it’s worth his time to fight, then we as residents under his authority should be prepared to support or oppose him accordingly.

How NOT to Think About This Issue

To that end, let me first outline what our response should NOT be in thinking about this issue. This is a much debated and hotly contested topic, and there is legal basis for both sides of the argument. I think that faithful conservatives, and faithful Christians, could fall on either side of this debate, and neither is a clear-cut black and white right or wrong. You also don’t have to agree with President Trump on every issue. BUT, in thinking about this issue, there are certainly common pitfalls that we should guard ourselves to NOT fall into.

First, we should not minimize the seriousness of illegal immigration. I have heard too often the idea that we should just be empathetic toward those who come here illegally, that they just want a better life for themselves and for their children. This is especially the case for mothers who want to give birth to their babies here. And of course, we CAN be empathetic to pregnant women who want to give their child every advantage in the world – but our empathy does not have to mean, and should not mean, that we lose sight of the serious nature of invading a country illegally. It’s something we are all desensitized to in our world today. People flood across the border, we hear about the thousands of interactions with Border Patrol daily, and we just carryon with our day as if that isn’t a problem. Don’t do that. Immigrants who refuse to go through the legal process for entry into our country are, by nature, criminals, as they have broken the law to be here. While some people may be coming here for a better life, many abuse that fact to come here to commit more crime. Criminals escape prisons to come to the United States. Gangs and cartels take the opportunity to flow mass amounts of drugs across our border and terrorize local communities and border towns. Human traffickers build an entire business off of promising migrants safe passage to the border, only to rape and kill them on their journey. Illegal immigration incentivizes all sorts of crime, and all sorts of criminals, and we cannot allow it under the notion that there are some people with good hearts and good intentions who just want a better life.

Second, we should not confuse the immense blessing and privilege of citizenship in America with the right for all people to obtain citizenship whenever and however they please. American citizenship IS an incredible blessing. Our country stands firm on Judeo-Christian values, on the values of freedom and democracy, it is for the people and by the people. America gives a voice to the common man, it gives opportunity to people of any background or social class to attain their dreams, it gives people the freedom to practice their chosen religion and raise their families to worship their god. It is a privilege that the people living here, who are born citizens to parents who are citizens, often overlook and disregard on a daily basis. We should be grateful for all the blessings that are ours because we live in this country, and we should be happy to extend those blessings to immigrants who come here through the legal process. However, just because America is wonderful, and is a beacon of hope to many countries opposite her values, does not mean that it is a RIGHT for anyone outside of our country to obtain citizenship here in whatever circumstances they choose. It is therefore not mean, or unloving, to put in place specific guardrails or criteria for citizenship.

I don’t say this lightly, because as I’ve mentioned before, this topic is personal to me. My husband is a first-generation immigrant from India, and we spent a lot of time and money on going through the legal process for him to obtain permanent residence here. If anyone has incentive to claim that everyone should be allowed here, and granted automatic citizenship here, it would be me, because I would LOVE for my husband to be a citizen of the United States. But we both agree, both me as an American citizen and him as a noncitizen, that he was never entitled to citizenship here. He applied through the process set in place by our government to come to America for school, he entered the lottery for a work visa, knowing full well that it could have been denied, and after we got married, we paid thousands of dollars, went through all the hoops of medical exams and paperwork, and waited for that final approval for him to get his green card. Even now, we have to wait the appropriate amount of time before he can finally apply for citizenship. He did that whole process legally because he respects the United States. He respects the fact that each country has a right and a responsibility to set laws that will protect its citizens. He chose to abide by those laws, and he is living proof that it is possible to do it. One day we will throw the biggest party imaginable to celebrate that a boy born in India and raised in the Middle East is now an American citizen; and until that day, we will continue to respect the laws and processes in place for him to reach that goal.

I understand a very small piece of the hardship of navigating immigration to America, and yet I realize the policy, laws, and government processes are not written for your friend, her mother, or my husband. Policy is written in the cold light of day, for the welfare of most people, designed to protect, preserve, and uphold a country, for the greater good.

Third, the discussion of birthright citizenship has nothing to do with racism. I have already seen several articles calling President Trump’s executive order racist. That’s a lie. This has absolutely nothing to do with race. The case of Dred Scott and slavery? That has everything to do with race! But this is based on immigration status, no matter what country you’re from or what color your skin is. My husband is brown, his being brown did not factor one bit into his ability to apply for legal status here, nor did it prevent him from becoming a permanent resident. Claiming this is about race is a cheap lie, and it would be foolish to buy into it.

Fourth, it is not mean to enforce borders. I already covered this so I won’t add much more on it, but a country must protect its sovereignty or else it won’t exist as a country. Every other country does it. America isn’t exempt just because we’re a country that everyone wants to live in. In fact, only 33 countries in the entire world offer unconditional birthright citizenship, and they are all located in either North or South America, or the Caribbean.[23] Does this mean that all of Europe, or Asia, or Africa is racist, bigoted, or mean for not granting birthright citizenship to babies born there? Of course not! But for some reason we are expected to believe that the United States mandating requirements for citizenship is somehow different than those other countries.

Fifth, the argument against birthright citizenship is not “just about enforcing the law,” as we hear from so many opposed to President Trump. If California was really dedicated to enforcing the law, officials would cooperate with ICE to detain and deport illegal immigrants in accordance with federal law. But, as we’ve previously considered in other articles, they don’t do that. They choose to enforce the law, or to protect the constitution, only when it is politically advantageous. Don’t let that derail you from thinking objectively.

Lastly, you do not have to feel guilty as an American citizen for your citizenship. Yes, you were born into the freest, and might I say, best country in the world, but you did not choose that any more than someone else chose to be born somewhere else. No one should guilt you into thinking that just because you have rights, freedoms, and privileges that someone else doesn’t have, that means you can’t speak on the topic, and that you are calloused toward those who did not inherit America as their country of origin. Does it make you better than others from other countries? Absolutely not. But does it make you indebted to others from other countries? Also no.

How TO Think About This Issue

With all that being said, we finally need to address how we SHOULD think about this issue. I want to reiterate that there isn’t a right or wrong position to take here, but I still think there are some things to consider when forming your opinion on birthright citizenship.

First, consider the real abuse of birthright citizenship taking place today. Again, I just covered this in-depth, so I don’t have much to add here, but I do want to point out that it is illegal to travel to the United States for the purpose of giving birth to a child so they will be an American citizen. The State Department’s own rules state, “Travel to the United States with the primary purpose of obtaining U.S. citizenship for a child by giving birth in the United States is an impermissible basis for the issuance of a B nonimmigrant visa.”[24] They also state, “Birth tourism is problematic because it short circuits and demeans the U.S. naturalization process. U.S. citizenship is not a backup plan.”[25] Anyone coming here for that express purpose, or with that in mind, is wrong to do so, and is committing a crime. Should our constitution then defend those individuals, or be clarified to put an end to their criminality?

Second, consider the real context in which the 14th amendment was understood. To reiterate once more, the fourteenth amendment was not ratified to protect criminals entering our country and giving birth. It was not understood that way for decades. It was meant, in the wake of the Civil War, to protect all people living here from race-based discrimination and exclusion from participating in our country’s government through citizenship. If birthright citizenship is amended to exclude illegal immigrants, those who go through the legal channels of immigration will still be able to obtain citizenship, regardless of their race or national origin. This is not at odds with the intention of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Third, consider that there is actual legal basis for President Trump’s argument. That is because the legal precedents set by the Dred Scott case, and even the Wong Kim Ark case, were entirely different than granting citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants. Dred Scott was denied citizenship based on race. Wong Kim Ark’s parents were legal, permanent residents. Both had a right to citizenship to claim. Even in the United States v. Wong Kim Ark case, listen again to the majority ruling:

“Chinese persons, born out of the United States, remaining subjects of the Emperor of China, and not having become citizens of the United States, are entitled to the protection of, and owe allegiance to, the United States so long as they are permitted by the United States to reside here, and are ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof’ in the same sense as all other aliens residing in the United States.”[26]

Wong Kim’s parents were permitted by the United States to reside here and were subject to the jurisdiction of the United States the same as all others residing here. Are illegal immigrants permitted by the United States to live here? No! The federal government has the right to deport them for being here. It’s an entirely different situation, meaning the precedent set by the court case is not at odds with the Trump Administration’s executive order. It should be given fair hearing and consideration, not written off as unlawful or unconstitutional on its face.

That doesn’t mean that it isn’t fair to question if President Trump should make these amendments via executive order. Because it really comes down to an interpretation issue, it actually isn’t such a wild concept for the President to issue an executive order on it. But because the Citizenship Clause has been widely interpreted to grant anyone born here automatic citizenship, and because it has not been examined in court before in relation to illegal immigration, it will most likely need to go through the courts to reach a final ruling. But the point is, there is validity in these arguments, and whatever conclusion you reach, it’s a legal issue that warrants critical thinking and fair hearing.

Warning Against Manipulation

I want to end by adding a quick word specifically to my Christian brothers and sisters, but one that applies to everyone across the board. It is common with issues like these, which can be emotional and personal to many, to hear a plea to consider your humanity. Consider that illegal immigrants are humans too. Consider that all people are made in the image of God. Consider that no human is illegal.

But let me be clear: requiring someone to abide by the law does not disregard their humanity, nor does it disrespect that they are made in God’s image. God Himself punishes the lawbreakers and requires his law be obeyed. He is a God of law and order, justice and fairness. It is the government’s responsibility, mandated in Romans 13, to punish the evildoer and reward righteousness. Should the government turn a blind eye to the masses of crime, rape, and murder committed by illegal immigrant men, cases like Laken Riley and Jocelyn Nungaray, in the name of having empathy toward them for wanting to come to America? Should our leaders ignore the 300,000 migrant children who have been completely lost by our government, most the victims of forced labor and sex trafficking, as a direct result of illegal immigration?[27] Should they do nothing about the tons of fentanyl flowing over the border and into our communities, killing our children, due to a lack of enforcement?

The answer is unequivocally no. Our government must punish this wickedness and consider policy that will carry out its primary responsibility. It doesn’t strip away anyone’s humanity to do. It’s time to put Americans first.

References:

[1] Jones, Blake, and Dustin Gardiner. “Move Over Gavin Newsom, Trump’s Got a New California Antagonist.” Politico, January 22, 2025. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/22/bonta-trump-immigration-california-00199881?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

[2] Schwartz, Mattathias, and Mike Baker. “Twenty-two States Sue to Stop Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Order.” The New York Times, January 21, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/21/us/trump-birthright-citizenship.html.

[3] Jones and Gardiner, “Move Over Gavin Newsom, Trump’s Got a New California Antagonist.”

[4] Passel, Jeffrey, and Jens Manuel Krogstad. “What We Know About Unauthorized Immigrants Living in the U.S.” Pew Research Center, November 22, 2024. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/22/what-we-know-about-unauthorized-immigrants-living-in-the-us/.

[5] Treisman, Rachel. “Trump Wants to End Birthright Citizenship. That’s Easier Said Than Done.” NPR, January 23, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/01/23/nx-s1-5270572/birthright-citizenship-trump-executive-order.

[6] Library of Congress. “Amdt14.S1.1.2 Citizenship Clause Doctrine.” Congress.gov, n.d. https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt14-S1-1-2/ALDE_00000812/.

[7] Historical Society of the New York Courts. “14th Amendment - Historical Society of the New York Courts,” November 14, 2023. https://history.nycourts.gov/democracy-teacher-toolkit/civil-rights-and-reconstruction/14th-amendment-2/#:~:text=After%20the%20Civil%20War%2C%20as,protection%20from%20the%205th%20Amendment.

[8] Erin Blakemore, “Why The United States Has Birthright Citizenship,” HISTORY, January 21, 2025, https://www.history.com/news/birthright-citizenship-history-united-states.

[9] Ibid.

[10] National Archives. “The Emancipation Proclamation,” January 28, 2022. https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation#:~:text=President%20Abraham%20Lincoln%20issued%20the,and%20henceforward%20shall%20be%20free.%22.

[11] Federal Judicial Center, “Civil Rights Act of 1866,” n.d., https://www.fjc.gov/history/timeline/civil-rights-act-1866#:~:text=April%209%2C%201866,their%20constitutional%20and%20statutory%20rights.

[12] National Archives. “14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Civil Rights (1868),” March 6, 2024. https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/14th-amendment#:~:text=Passed%20by%20Congress%20June%2013,Rights%20to%20formerly%20enslaved%20people.

[13] National Constitution Center – constitutioncenter.org. “United States V. Wong Kim Ark | Constitution Center,” n.d. https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/supreme-court-case-library/united-states-v-wong-kim-ark-1898.

[14] Ibid.

[15] The White House. “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” January 21, 2025. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/protecting-the-meaning-and-value-of-american-citizenship/.

[16] USCIS. “Green Card for a Person Born in the United States to a Foreign Diplomat | USCIS,” January 22, 2025. https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-eligibility/green-card-for-a-person-born-in-the-united-states-to-a-foreign-diplomat#:~:text=COVID%2D19%20vaccination.-,A%20person%20born%20in%20the%20United%20States%20to%20a%20foreign,to%20the%20United%20States%20Constitution.

[17] Library of Congress, “Amdt14.S1.1.2 Citizenship Clause Doctrine.”

[18] Feere, Jon. “Birth Tourists Come From Around the Globe.” Center for Immigration Studies, August 26, 2015. https://cis.org/Feere/Birth-Tourists-Come-Around-GlobeBirth Tourists Come from Around the Globe.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Guendelman, Sylvia, and Monica Jasis. “Giving Birth Across the Border: The San Diego-Tijuana Connection.” Social Science & Medicine 34, no. 4 (July 17, 2002). https://doi.org/10.1016/0277-9536(92)90302-7.

[21] Karami, Iris. “KVEO-TV.” KVEO-TV, March 25, 2021. https://www.valleycentral.com/news/local-news/migrant-mother-swims-across-rio-grande-river-while-in-labor/.

[22] Addario, Lynsey. “Pregnant, Exhausted and Turned Back at the Border.” The New York Times, November 27, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/us/border-mexico-pregnant-women.html#:~:text=MATAMOROS%2C%20Mexico%20%E2%80%94%20Griselda%20was%2038,shelters%20and%20filthy%20tent%20camps.

[23] “Countries With Birthright Citizenship 2024,” n.d. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-with-birthright-citizenship.

[24] United States Senate, and Rob Portman Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. “BIRTH TOURISM IN THE UNITED STATES.” Report. MINORITY STAFF REPORT, 2020. https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/imo/media/doc/2022.12.20-%20Final_Birth%20Tourism%20Report.pdf.

[25] Ibid.

[26] Ibid.

[27] Debusmann, Bernd, Jr. “Are 300,000 Undocumented Immigrant Children Missing in the US?,” November 26, 2024. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj0jlre7mymo.