Trump says he plans to end birthright citizenship via executive order.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/30/politics/donald-trump-ending-birthright-citizenship/index.html

Today is going to be a shit show..

President Donald Trump says he plans to sign an executive order that would end the right to citizenship for the children of non-citizens and unauthorized immigrants born on US soil.

It's unclear if the President has the authority to strip citizenship of those born in the US with an executive order, and he did not say when he would sign the order in the clip released by Axios. CNN has reached out to the White House for comment."We're the only country in the world where a person comes in, has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States for 85 years with all of those benefits," Trump said in an interview for "Axios on HBO." The call comes as Trump campaigns hard for the midterm elections on a fear-based agenda focused on immigration.Several other countries, including Canada, have a policy of birthright citizenship, according to an analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for reducing immigration."It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. And it has to end," he continued."It was always told to me that you needed a Constitutional amendment. Guess what? You don't," he said, adding that he has run it by his counsel. "You can definitely do it with an act of Congress. But now they're saying I can do it just with an executive order," Trump said.The President didn't provide any details of his plan, but said that "it's in the process. It'll happen." He previously The move is certain to set off a legal fight that could potentially wind up in the Supreme Court over his authority to issue Executive Orders with such broad scope. The interview is a part of "Axios on HBO," a new four-part documentary series debuting on HBO this Sunday, according to the news site.

Whether it succeeds or not, it won't last past his presidency. But I trust that this is just another political stunt to get Republicans fired up for midterms. He can try though and I'm sure his supporters will praise the effort. Successful or not. I for one can't wait to see his executive orders reversed by the next Democrat president. It'll be a glorious day.

A stunt it is, November 6th can't get here soon enough.

What if it sticks?

The US isn't the only country to have birthright citizenship (or Jus Soli), although birthright citizenship is heavily prevalent in the Americas.

The 14th Amendment (and generally the Constitution) will be highly inconvenient to Trump.

By ending birthright citizenship, we introduce another problem: Statelessness. People born in the U.S. after birthright citizenship is removed will be stateless with no political representation, no access to healthcare and vital services, and are often subjected to detention with no where to go. Basically, we're introducing a humanitarian crisis on American soil.

Why induce another headache?

@n64dd: "What if it sticks?"

It can't. It's explicit in the Constitution. It's an obvious stunt.

I'm not really supporting him with this one. Even if he wanted to do this, he went it in the dumbest way possible.

@drunk_pi:

For the votes. It's all about the votes. The hold Trump has on his supporters is so strong that he'll get the praise even if it fails. Because all he has to say is: "Hey, at least I tried!" And they'll praise him: "Well God bless you for trying, Mr. President!"

clearly next will be getting rid of birth right to citizenship for EVERYONE.

your citizenship will be determined by a government entity

If what sticks, the Executive Order? Don't know, it seems it would be unconstitutional but I haven't read about.

I'm sure there will be plenty of analysis done and I'm looking forward to it.

You know I would call this crazy...but what happened today is crazy.

F anyone who goes against the constitution.

Well that seems very divisive. Almost like he's taking advantage of societal divisions by widening them for his own political gain.

he's literally sending thousands of troops to the us border as a political stunt.

this doesn't surprise me at all.

He signs this, state attorneys sue, maybe gets expedited to the Supreme Court? It would probably dominate the headlines until next Tuesday.

I feel fairly confident that Kavanaugh would vote in his favor.

what if the liberals are right about this President? that he really is dangerous

Same... and Neil Gorsuch too.

But would anyone else? I mean if it goes directly against the constitution it's hard to imagine a majority support.

yeah i doubt it would.

but regardless its noteworthy to point out the ones who likely would vote yes. we could literally be just a few Supreme Court votes away from eventually having your citizenship determined by a government group which determines it at will

Section 1 of the 14th Amendment reads as fallows:

Section 1.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.

The "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" issue aside, it is clear that it says that all persons born in the US are citizens of the US. Gorsuch being a textualist would most likely find an EO stripping individuals born in the US of their citizenship unconstitutional.

Anyone that feels different I'm taking 1 year sig bets right now.

Can Trump End Birthright Citizenship by Executive Order?

On substance, I believe President Trump is right on birthright citizenship — the 14th Amendment does not require it. I do not believe, however, that the president may change the interpretation of the 14th Amendment, which has been in effect for decades, by executive order, as he is reportedly contemplating.

My friend John Eastman explained why the 14th Amendment does not mandate birthright citizenship in this 2015 New York Times op-ed. In a nutshell, the Amendment states: “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.” The highlighted term, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” was understood at the time of adoption to mean not owing allegiance to any other sovereign. To take the obvious example, if a child is born in France to a married couple who are both American citizens, the child is an American citizen.

I won’t rehash the arguments on both sides. With due respect to our friend Dan McLaughlin (see here), I think Professor Eastman has the better of the argument. As I have observed before, and as we editorialized when Donald Trump was a candidate (here), this is a very charged issue, and it is entirely foreseeable that the Supreme Court (to say nothing of the lower federal courts teeming with Obama appointees) would construe the term jurisdiction differently from what it meant when the 14th Amendment was ratified.

For today, the more narrow question is: Assuming arguendo that the 14th Amendment does not require birthright citizenship, is our practice of conferring it merely an executive policy that the president has the power to change by executive order?

I don’t think so.

Again, there are reports that the president may issue such an order. The problem as I see it is twofold. First, the legal landscape is not limited to the 14th Amendment. Congress has enacted a statute, Section 1401 of the immigration and naturalization laws (Title 8, U.S. Code). In pertinent part, it appears merely to codify in statutory law what the 14th Amendment says: included among U.S. citizens is any “person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” But that means the issue is not just what jurisdiction was understood to mean in 1868 when the 14th Amendment was adopted, but what it meant in 1952, when the statute defining U.S. citizenship was enacted (it has been amended several times since then).

Secondly, even assuming the meaning was the same, Congress’s codification of the 14th Amendment — which it did not need to do — is a strong expression of Congress’s intent to exercise its constitutional authority to set the terms of citizenship.

The president has extremely good lawyers in the White House Counsel’s Office and the Justice Department, and maybe they have told him that the president gets to interpret the term jurisdiction and enforce his understanding of it unless and until Congress or the courts say otherwise. To my mind, however, the president may not unilaterally change an understanding of the law that has been in effect for decades under a duly enacted federal law. Presumably, if Congress did not believe conferring birthright citizenship was consistent with Section 1401, it would have amended the statute.

Moreover, it seems to me that, because Congress has weighed in on citizenship by codifying the 14th Amendment, the courts will swat down any executive order on the ground that it exceeds the president’s authority. That is, the courts will not even have to reach the merits of what jurisdiction means for purposes of the 14th Amendment and Section 1401.

We have seen something like this in an area of more certain executive power. President Bush attempted unilaterally to set up military commissions in wartime under his commander-in-chief authority. Even though there was plenty of precedent supporting this, the Supreme Court invalidated the commissions and told the president he needed Congress’s statutory blessing. (Congress later enacted the Military Commissions Act.)

Consequently, if the president actually issues an executive order changing the birthright-citizenship policy, I doubt the sun will set before an injunction is issued. I am in favor of changing the current understanding of birthright citizenship, but I believe such a change must be done by statute to have any hope of surviving court-scrutiny . . . and even then, I give it less than a 50-50 chance.

Annnnnd of course with my Wikipedia law degree it seems I may have jumped the gun, either way, my offer still stands.

Wikipedia's School of Law reputation shall not be disparaged.

I want to know who is the asshole who put in all these executive order powers into place in the first place.

and the problem I have with 'parents must have been born here' argument is that its a bit circular given that we all are from immigrants. So why just parents? why not grandparents? why not great grandparents? if it can be parents, I dont see a legal reason why it could not also be great great great great grandparents

So I looked up the 14th ammendment, and here's my concern with your claim that texualist would see it as settled and what the founders would have wanted. The 14th ammendment was adopted in 1868, over a hundred years after the constitution was written and adopted (June 21, 1788). That gives Gorsuch plenty of wiggle room on whether or not it should be kept.

Wtf I wouldn't have been a citizen then.

exactly

if its ruled to be Constitutional to apply this 'parents of rule' there is no reason the same reasoning could not be applied to grandparents, great grandparents etc.

making everyones citizenship subjective to be determined by courts

Well, textualist are supposed to be guided by the text and what those word meant at the time the amendment/law was passed so looking at it from that angle I don't plenty of wiggle room, if anything out of all the expressed jurisprudence philosophies textualism is precisely the one that would theoretically leave for less wiggle room than others.

I mean, when you compare it to "the living document theory"...

I would agree 100% that it is meant to do nothing more than fire up voters (or those on the fence) and to bring the issue front and center.

@n64dd: it's actually not a bad plan, which means he didn't have anything to do with it.

Strategy is to end it by executive order knowing it will be challenged in court, and rightfully. No doubt the intent is to take it to the supreme Court where the new conservative majority will simply rule in Trump's favor.

It might take years, but if trump gets a second term he could see it enacting through the supreme Court

here is the thing though,

if it is determined constitutional then there is nothing to suggest in any law that they could not extend it to grandparents, or great grandparents, effectively meaning no birth right to citizenship at all for anyone.

Kidding aside, what Trump is suggesting is unconstitutional, and if ratified as such, not through executive order but through an amendment, it will be unironically labeled as the destruction amendment.

@tryit: exactly. What better way to control who gets to vote? You think the GOP is looking good demographically 30 years down the road.

This is a long con

have your citizenship determined by a panel of judges appointed by the King basically is what they are shooting for.

Thing is I never understood about these folks is why they have such a desire to be so proactively dicks

@tryit: money

money and power...yeah yeah but how much money and power does one need to just take a dump and relax for christ sake.

these people are ill..

to be fair I see it in real life too, people just work and work and work and acquire and acquire when they dont have to and it doesnt improve their quality of life..anyway I digress

We should revoke Trump's citizenship and deport him to Russia

@tryit: being wealthy is nice

do trump supporters really dislike foreigners that much?

the solution is simple. all immigrants coming into the country must register as republicans

studies show that amounts over $75,000 does not improve life.

so I think its safe to say if one has 1 million dollars instead of 1 billion dollars that the better way to improve life is to take a deep breath, big old crap and read a book and try to relax for once

Also good luck getting anyone from so called "white countries" to immigrate here. The quality of life is so much better in Western Europe, Scandinavia, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan thanks to great social programs that almost no one wants to come here from those places. Immigrants like those in the caravan are all you will get. People fleeing a horrible place for a place that's a bit less horrible. If Republicans really hate brown people so much and want more white people to immigrate, it's going to take universal healthcare, livable wages, paid maternity and paternity leave, and free college. Nobody is going to give up any of that stuff to come here. It's why you see almost no immigration to the US from any of the places I mentioned.

@tryit: I can verify those studies to be wrong.

I can verify those studies to be absolutely right.

by personal experience, I am happier now and I live off less.

regardless, when I was in Houston I used to drive into work and sometimes one of these super expensive cars would go into downtown as well (by expensive I mean likely 400,000). It was 8am, going into work. I will never be able to understand why a person who can afford a $500,000 car would willingly get up at 8am drive downtown in a major city to go to work.

Bring on the studies, I want to check them out.

I really don’t how anybody can defend this one.

Should we call on Jac? I'm sure he would be more than happy to.

@Serraph105: I will rip him to shreds over this. Anybody with a brain should be against this. I will be very surprised if there are no riots over this.

My prediction for when you see people defending this, and that's when not if, the defense will be based around anchor babies which has been in discussion for many years. It will be that "anchor babies" are bad, and anchor babies are a backdoor to citizenship because once you have the baby you can't morally deport the family without also deporting a US citizen and if you deport one without the other you will be breaking up families.

well to point out but not to be an ass the Elisabeth Warren story you felt would explode didnt.

I dont think there will be right wing outrage on this topic, that is my prediction

People have took advantage of this for years so I have no problem with it.

@n64dd

here is someone on the Right defending it

@tryit: yep.. it needs to be done on a case by case basis. But I watched a documentary on El Chapo one of Mexico's most infamous drug lords who smuggled his pregnant girlfriend across the border so his daughter could be born here and thus be a US citizen. Examples like this are what I'm referring to.