Trump out to end citizenship by birth
US leader claims executive order can overturn US Constitution
US President Donald Trump said he would scrap a constitutional guarantee to citizenship for anyone born on US soil in a bid to retain Republican control of Congress. Trump said he had spoken to lawmakers about the plan, but his own fellow Republicans stressed that it was impossible to change the 14th Amendment through an executive order.
WASHINGTON— US President Donald Trump said he would scrap a constitutional guarantee to citizenship for anyone born on US soil in a bid to retain Republican control of Congress.
With his eyes on next Tuesday’s elections, Trump rushed hardline immigration declarations, including the dispatch of troops to meet a migrant “invasion” from Mexico.
Executive action enough?
“It was always told to me that you needed a constitutional amendment. Guess what? You don’t,” Trump said. “Now they’re saying I can do it just with an executive order.”
Trump said he had spoken to lawmakers about the plan and that the change is already in the works.
“It’s in the process, it’ll happen—with an executive order,” he said.
But Trump’s own fellow Republicans stressed that it was impossible to change the 14th Amendment through an executive order.
“You cannot end birthright citizenship with an executive order,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan.
“I’m a believer in following the plain text of the Constitution, and I think in this case the 14th Amendment is pretty clear, and that would involve a very, very lengthy constitutional process.”
But Sen. Lindsey Graham hailed Trump’s announcement.
“Finally, a president willing to take on this absurd policy of birthright citizenship,” he wrote on Twitter.
Aimed at voters
Trump did not indicate the timing of the proposal, but the Associated Press surmised it is part of Trump’s plan to depicting the United States as under attack by immigrants.
Trump’s hardline stand could help him make up after a week dominated by the massacre of 11 people in a Jewish synagogue in Pittsburgh, where Pennsylvanians protested his arrival.
But Trump critics said White House officials knew that there could be no concrete action on birthright citizenship until after the election.
‘They’re playing all of us’
“They’re playing all of us,” said immigration lawyer David W. Leopold of the advocacy group America’s Voice.
“This is not about locking people up. This is not about birthright citizenship. This is about winning an election next week,” Leopold said.
Omar Jadwat, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union in New York, said the constitution is very clear.
“If you are born in the United States, you’re a citizen,” he said. He called it “outrageous” that Trump could think he can override the constitution with an executive order.
The nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute estimates that more than 4 million US-born children under the age of 18 have an unauthorized immigrant parent.