Leftists, only days after President Donald Trump issued new executive orders following guidelines from the Supreme Court to crack down on birth tourism and birthright citizenship, have gone to court to fight him again.
When Trump was elected he issued an order that would have returned the understanding of the constitutional amendment granting birthright citizenship to its original, which dates back to the aftermath of the Civil War.
He pointed out that unlike most nations in the world, the practice that had been adopted on the issue was that anyone, anywhere in the world, could obtain U.S. citizenship and all its benefits for a child simply by breaking into the U.S. and giving birth.
Trump pointed out there are times when women lie about their reason for asking for permission to enter the U.S., in order to give birth.
His original order cracking down was overturned by the Supreme Court, which said the amendment does, in fact, grant citizenship to those born in the U.S.
But Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in his writings, suggested that there can be exceptions to those grants, and Congress would be allowed to designate groups to be excluded.
Last week Trump, following parameters he saw in the Supreme Court’s opinion, issued orders that federal agencies crack down on birth tourism, the travel by women into the U.S. specifically for the purpose of obtaining U.S. citizenship for their newborn, as well as expanding the categories of people who could be excluded.
As expected, a report at Scotusblog says activists already have gone to court to fight his efforts to protect American taxpayers.
It is lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups who instructed U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante to put into words their agenda: that the exceptions to that birthright citizenship grants are few and far between, mainly for foreign diplomats.
In the Supreme Court’s ruling Justice John Roberts said the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause actually calls for a broad application of those grants, and mainly exclude foreign diplomats and their children.
Then last week Trump’s new order, called “Continuing to Protect the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” came. He also, at the same time, delivered another, called “Ending Birth Tourism,”
Trump’s order would exclude from the program children of foreign embassy workers, employees of a foreign governments, employees of international groups like the United Nations, and any child whose parent is an “alien enemy.”
Further, excluded would be children of parents who “engage[d] in a commercial transaction to ensure that the person’s mother is present in the United States, or a territory of the United States, to give birth” and to children born in a U.S. territory or U.S. territorial waters “where citizenship is not conferred by Federal statute,” the report said.
