Trump case forces US Supreme Court to confront prospect of Americans losing citizenship

Source: Raw Story · Bias: Far Left

Summary

As the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments last week about the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship, Justice Sonia Sotomayor seemed skeptical.The order as written applies only to babies born in the future, and the Trump administration has asked the court to exclude current citizens from any decision. Still, the court’s senior liberal justice wasn’t so sure it would work out like that.“But the logic of your position, if accepted, is that this president or the next president or Congress or someone else could decide that it shouldn’t be prospective,” Sotomayor told U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, the government’s top advocate at the court. “There would be nothing limiting that, according to your theory.”The birthright citizenship case, Trump v. Barbara, is forcing the Supreme Court to confront the prospect of the United States becoming a much different kind of nation — one where Americans risk losing their citizenship and babies could be born effectively stateless. It’s also a nation that would more closely resemble its past, when broad swaths of people were excluded from the coveted title of American.A majority of the court, including several conservative justices, appeared unpersuaded by the Trump administration’s argument that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified during Reconstruction, doesn’t guarantee citizenship to nearly everyone born on American soil. The court may very well strike down the order, which has never taken effect, later this year.But whatever the decision, the case has prompted a high-stakes debate over who is an American — and the consequences of that definition — that’s playing out in the courtroom, in court documents, and on the steps of the Supreme Court.“Birthright citizenship is not just a legal principle,” Norman Wong said at a demonstration outside the Supreme Court last week.Wong is a grandchild of Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco but denied entry back into the country after visiting China more than a century ago. Officials at the time argued he wasn’t a citizen, but he took his case to the Supreme Court and, in a 1898 decision, the justices affirmed that virtually all children born in the United States were guaranteed citizenship.“It’s a statement about who we are as a nation,” Wong said of birthright citizenship. “It affirms that America is not defined by bloodlines or exclusion, but shared values and equal rights.”A different viewTrump and some Republicans view birthright citizenship differently.The 14th Amendment says “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 Trump administration, which has worked to carry out mass deportations, contends that children born to parents in the country illegally or temporarily are not subject to the country’s jurisdiction. Most historians and legal scholars repudiate that position.The executive order, signed on Trump’s first day back in office, calls citizenship a privilege — not a right — that’s a “priceless and profound gift.”During a recent Oval Office event, Trump told reporters that birthright citizenship was intended to extend citizenship to formerly enslaved people and their children following the Civil War.“The reason was it had to do with the babies of slaves,” Trump said.Some Republicans have embraced a conception of the U.S. as a nation bound by a distinct cultural heritage — sometimes in language that celebrates European settlers — as opposed to a people brought together by the idea of America or a set of common principles. Like Trump, they advocate for a restrictive approach to immigration.At a conference last fall on national conservatism — the name sometimes given to this perspective — U.S. Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Missouri Republican, called America a “a way of life that is ours, and only ours, and if we disappear, then America, too, will cease to exist.”Schmitt filed a brief with the Supreme Court in January, along with Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, in support of the executive order.“The Citizenship Clause applies only to those who have been allowed to adopt our country as their permanent and lawful home,” the brief says.Revoking citizenship?At the Supreme Court last week, Sotomayor pressed Sauer on a 1923 Supreme Court decision, U.S. vs. Thind. In that case, the justices ruled that a Sikh man from India, Bhagat Singh Thind, wasn’t eligible for citizenship.Thind argued that he was a “free white person,” a category of person allowed to naturalize under federal law at the time. The court found that Thind didn’t meet that definition under the common understanding of the phrase.

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Trump case forces US Supreme Court to confront prospect of Americans losing citizenship
Raw Story

Trump case forces US Supreme Court to confront prospect of Americans losing citizenship

Far Left

As the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments last week about the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship, Justice Sonia Sotomayor seemed skeptical.The order as written applies only to babies born in the future, and the Trump administration has asked the court to exclude current citizens from any decision. Still, the court’s senior liberal justice wasn’t so sure it would work out like that.“But the logic of your position, if accepted, is that this president or the next president or Congress or someone else could decide that it shouldn’t be prospective,” Sotomayor told U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, the government’s top advocate at the court. “There would be nothing limiting that, according to your theory.”The birthright citizenship case, Trump v. Barbara, is forcing the Supreme Court to confront the prospect of the United States becoming a much different kind of nation — one where Americans risk losing their citizenship and babies could be born effectively stateless. It’s also a nation that would more closely resemble its past, when broad swaths of people were excluded from the coveted title of American.A majority of the court, including several conservative justices, appeared unpersuaded by the Trump administration’s argument that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified during Reconstruction, doesn’t guarantee citizenship to nearly everyone born on American soil. The court may very well strike down the order, which has never taken effect, later this year.But whatever the decision, the case has prompted a high-stakes debate over who is an American — and the consequences of that definition — that’s playing out in the courtroom, in court documents, and on the steps of the Supreme Court.“Birthright citizenship is not just a legal principle,” Norman Wong said at a demonstration outside the Supreme Court last week.Wong is a grandchild of Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco but denied entry back into the country after visiting China more than a century ago. Officials at the time argued he wasn’t a citizen, but he took his case to the Supreme Court and, in a 1898 decision, the justices affirmed that virtually all children born in the United States were guaranteed citizenship.“It’s a statement about who we are as a nation,” Wong said of birthright citizenship. “It affirms that America is not defined by bloodlines or exclusion, but shared values and equal rights.”A different viewTrump and some Republicans view birthright citizenship differently.The 14th Amendment says “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 Trump administration, which has worked to carry out mass deportations, contends that children born to parents in the country illegally or temporarily are not subject to the country’s jurisdiction. Most historians and legal scholars repudiate that position.The executive order, signed on Trump’s first day back in office, calls citizenship a privilege — not a right — that’s a “priceless and profound gift.”During a recent Oval Office event, Trump told reporters that birthright citizenship was intended to extend citizenship to formerly enslaved people and their children following the Civil War.“The reason was it had to do with the babies of slaves,” Trump said.Some Republicans have embraced a conception of the U.S. as a nation bound by a distinct cultural heritage — sometimes in language that celebrates European settlers — as opposed to a people brought together by the idea of America or a set of common principles. Like Trump, they advocate for a restrictive approach to immigration.At a conference last fall on national conservatism — the name sometimes given to this perspective — U.S. Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Missouri Republican, called America a “a way of life that is ours, and only ours, and if we disappear, then America, too, will cease to exist.”Schmitt filed a brief with the Supreme Court in January, along with Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, in support of the executive order.“The Citizenship Clause applies only to those who have been allowed to adopt our country as their permanent and lawful home,” the brief says.Revoking citizenship?At the Supreme Court last week, Sotomayor pressed Sauer on a 1923 Supreme Court decision, U.S. vs. Thind. In that case, the justices ruled that a Sikh man from India, Bhagat Singh Thind, wasn’t eligible for citizenship.Thind argued that he was a “free white person,” a category of person allowed to naturalize under federal law at the time. The court found that Thind didn’t meet that definition under the common understanding of the phrase.

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