The purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to settle the racial citizenship question once and for all, to prevent forever the subjugation of one class of people by another. Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at ending birthright citizenship is an attempt to reverse one outcome of the Civil War, which was the creation of a permanent underclass of stateless people without any rights to defend themselves.
In 1856, in notorious Dred Scott In his decision declaring that blacks could not become U.S. citizens, Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote that as a "subordinate and inferior biological class," blacks had "no rights that whites are bound to respect." Yes, the Declaration of Independence stated that “all men are created equal,” but “the enslaved African race was not intended to be included.”
Frederick Douglass argued that the Constitution did not sanction slavery, and he responded to the Taney decision by saying that one could only do so "by denigrating and discarding the most merciful rules of interpretation of the law, and thinking that they are in no way of no value, can a defense of slavery be found in the Constitution;" ignoring the simple and common-sense reading of the instrument itself; by showing that the Constitution does not mean what it says, and by saying that it does not mean what it means, by assuming that the written Constitution will Interpreted in terms of the secret and unwritten understanding of its framers, this understanding was declared to be in favor of slavery. "Sounds familiar.
Trump’s executive order also rewrites the Constitution by decree, something the president simply has no authority to do. The order seeks to exclude from citizenship the children of unauthorized immigrants born in the United States, noting that these children are not subject to the "jurisdiction" of the United States and therefore are not included in the expansion of citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized." in the amendment language. in the United States. That in itself makes no sense — as legal scholar Amanda Frost wrote earlier this month, “undocumented immigrants must comply with all federal and state laws.” When they violate criminal laws, they are imprisoned. If they park illegally, they will receive a ticket. "The text, history, judicial precedent, and executive branch interpretation all confirm that the Citizenship Clause applies to most U.S.-born aliens," James C. Ho, an ultraconservative federal judge, noted in 2006. children, including illegal immigrants. "
Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship is therefore an early test of the federal judiciary and the extent to which Republican-appointed judges and justices are willing to change the Constitution to give him what Trump wants. They've done this at least twice before, first by enacting the Fourteenth Amendment prohibiting insurrectionists from running for office outside the Constitution, and second by seeking to protect Trump from the complete invention of imperial presidential immunity Prosecution. But accepting Trump’s attempt to abolish birthright citizenship would have more immediate consequences for millions of people, by invalidating the principle that nearly everyone born here is an American.
After the Civil War, despite the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, white Southerners attempted at gunpoint to restore the slave society that existed before the war. Republicans in Congress guaranteed political and civil equality by passing the Fourteenth Amendment, which ensured civil equality, and the Fifteenth Amendment, which protected the right to vote regardless of race. The Civil War Amendment was the work of the Republican Party and a cornerstone of America's multiracial democracy. Despite this historic achievement, the Party of Lincoln has spent the past 80 years or so working to repeal or repeal them.
“Birthright citizenship, instituted at the outset of the Fourteenth Amendment as part of the effort to cleanse America of the legacy of slavery, remains an eloquent statement of the nature of American society, a powerful force in assimilating the children of immigrants, and a The denial of a long history of racism,” historian Eric Foner writes in the book Second founding of the People's Republic of Chinaa history of the Civil War Amendments, although he is careful to note that these principles were not always respected by governments—Jim Crow and Japanese internment being obvious examples. Birthright citizenship is “a dramatic repudiation of the powerful tradition that equates citizenship with whiteness, a principle that has been built into the naturalization process from the beginning and was constitutionalized by the Supreme Court in 2017.” Dred Scott".
The separation of American citizenship from whiteness was one of the parts of the Fourteenth Amendment most hated by white supremacist Democrats at the time. Democratic members of Congress have repeatedly equated U.S. citizenship with “Caucasian race,” insisted that the government “was built for white people,” and opposed extending the “advantages” of U.S. citizenship to “Negroes, coolies, and Indians.” Na wrote.
Trump’s immigration think tank shares similar sentiments. In an email to conservative reporters, Trump's point man on immigration, Stephen Miller, praised articles attacking the 1965 repeal of racist immigration restrictions that were passed in 1921 to keep Africans out of the country. Whites, southern and eastern Europeans and Jews were turned away. These laws once again redefined American citizenship in racist terms and helped inspire the Nazis. The end of these restrictions means more non-white immigrants can obtain U.S. citizenship, a phenomenon conservatives call the "Great Replacement," borrowing a concept from white supremacists. The Trump coalition now includes people who would otherwise be shut out of Miller's preferred immigration policies, but that doesn't change the fact that Trump's immigration advisers view the declining share of white people as an apocalypse that must be reversed. It is no accident that the project begins with the repeal of constitutional language guaranteeing citizenship regardless of race or country of origin.
Republicans have made significant gains among nonwhite voters over the past few years. Their reasons for supporting Trump will change neither the intentions of his entourage nor the effectiveness of his policies. Successfully abolishing birthright citizenship would mean the so-called anti-abortion party has created a class of stateless infants, a shadow caste mostly unprotected by law. This would require Americans to prove their citizenship again and again and leave them vulnerable to administrative errors that jeopardize their identification. These burdens are likely to fall disproportionately on nonwhites who Trumpists see as “replacements,” no matter how enthusiastic they are about Trump.
Since the rise of Trump, the once fringe idea that the Fourteenth Amendment does not grant citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants has gained traction among ambitious conservatives, whose malleable principles allow them to Shape yourself to the whim of the common man. By November 2024, the aforementioned Ho, who had written a detailed law review article refuting such theories, had become a bombastic, partisan Trump judge; he tiptoed reviewed his approach to insisting that the birthright citizenship clause did not apply in the case of an immigrant “invasion” and replaced the legal reasoning with Fox News talking points.
This is the level of respect conservative jurists have for the Constitution in the Trump era. Everything Trump says is right. What the original framers of the Fourteenth Amendment understood was that the necessity of a multiracial democracy required more than just bowing and scratching in the face of such lawlessness. At the moment, political leadership in both parties appears not up to the task.