Donald Trump Plans To Revoke 'Ridiculous' Birthright Citizenship
Law having an adverse effect on the United States immigration practices
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President Donald Trump outlined plans to revoke the automatic citizenship rights of children born in the U.S to illegal immigrants and groups who are not legally registered as citizens in the US, according to reports.
The President expressed he wishes to sign an executive order which would abolish the law allowing children born to non-US citizens automatic citizenship.
Known as "anchor babies," many conservatives have argued the practice is having an adverse effect on the United States immigration practices.
"We're the only country in the world where a person comes in and has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States... with all of those benefits. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. And it has to end."
According to to the 14th Amendment of the Constitution: 'All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the State wherein they reside.'
Trump maintains he can change the law without violating the Constitution via executive order.
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According to the DM: Several Republicans running for president in 2016, including Trump and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, argued at the time that the phrase 'subject to the jurisdiction' refers only to people with a legal right to be in the country.
In a preview of an HBO documentary scheduled to air on Sunday, Trump reveals that 'it was always told to me that you needed a constitutional amendment. Guess what? You don't.'
'You can do it with an Act of Congress. But now they're saying I can do it just with an executive order,' he adds.
'It's in the process. It'll happen ... with an executive order.'
Former U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services chief counsel Lynden Melmed told Axios that very few experts believe the President has the power to change birthright citizenship.
Some scholars agree that the 14th Amendment was never intended to give illegal immigrants' children citizenship and has been misapplied for decades.
Trump could change the application with an executive order, they say, limiting birthright citizenship only to the children born of legal permanent residents.
Michael Anton, a former national security official for Trump, wrote in The Washington Post that an executive order could 'specify to federal agencies that the children of non-citizens are not citizens.'
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But others, such as Judge James Ho, who was appointed by Trump to Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, insist that changing how the 14th Amendment is applied would be 'unconstitutional.'
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Only about 30 countries, including Canada, guarantee some sort of birthright citizenship, known as 'jus soli' (right of the soil).
Others grant citizenship based on the principle of 'jus sanguinis' (right of the blood) – where children can only inherit citizenship from their parents, not their birthplace.
India ended jus soli in 2004 when thousands of illegal immigrants entered the country from Bangladesh.
The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that approximately 7.5 percent of all births in the U.S. (about 300,000 per year) are to illegal immigrants.
The Center says around 4.5 million American citizens under age 18 were born to illegals.
Trump's remarkable statement comes one week before midterm elections, and amid a national panic after a second migrant caravan heading for the U.S. crossed into Mexico on Monday.
Hundreds of migrants following in the footsteps of the first caravan heading to the American border crossed a river from Guatemala.
A low-flying police helicopter flew overhead as the migrants waded in large groups through the Suchiate River's murky waters, apparently trying to use the downdraft from its rotors to discourage them.
Guatemala's Noti7 channel reported that one man drowned and aired video of a man dragging a seemingly lifeless body from the river.
Once on the Mexican side, the migrants were encircled and escorted by black-uniformed officers as sirens wailed.
The second group back at the Guatemalan frontier has been more unruly than the first that crossed.
Guatemala's Interior Ministry said Guatemalan police officers were injured when the migrant group broke through border barriers on Guatemala's side of the bridge.
Mexico authorities said migrants attacked its agents with rocks, glass bottles and fireworks when they broke through a gate on the Mexican end but were pushed back, and some allegedly carried guns and firebombs.
On Monday, Mexican Interior Secretary Alfonso Navarrete Prida lamented what he called a second 'violent attempt' to storm the border, accusing people of placing the elderly, pregnant women and children at the front, putting them at risk of being crushed.
'Fortunately, that did not happen,' he said.
