President Trump considered a radical change to American Immigration law, and that was just ahead of the midterm elections. In an interview with Axios website, the president said that he wants to end birthright citizenship, which is guaranteed under the 14th amendment to the constitution, with an Executive Order. Recording to PolitiFact, 30 other countries offer birthright citizenship. There was elections a week away and the president was talking about this… Was that a serious policy proposal by the president or was that something he wanted to get in a big constitution to debate about for a week to keep the focus on a topic he thought would work for him politically? Many people believed it was something that he wanted to do. Politically, he wanted to keep all of the emphasis on sending troops to the boarder to guard the caravan of Central American migrants, which hit the boarder recently.
We have a 14th amendment which states clearly that if one is born here, on U.S. soil, then he/she is a U.S citizen. President Trump says “I don’t even need to go to Congress to change this, I can use my Executive power to do it.” When it comes to immigration, trump believes that he can and he will even though some tell him that he can’t and he shouldn’t. In August 2015, the president rolled out his immigration policy and he said that he would do that, he wanted to end birthright citizenship. This has been a part of his plan on immigration for the very beginning. If it has been a part of his plan the whole time why did he bring it one week before the elections? Has he not been able to do it?
House Speaker Paul Ryan said that President Donald Trump cannot end birthright citizenship with an Executive Order. They didn’t like it when Obama tried to change immigration laws via Executive actions and obviously as conservatives, they believe in the Constitution. As a conservative, Ryan believes in following the plain text of the Constitution and thinks that in this case, the 14th amendment is pretty clear. What Trump is trying to do would involve a very lengthy constitutional process. On the other hand, Ryan agrees with the President in getting at the root issue which is unchecked illegal immigration.
Trump’s decision is based on politics. He knows immigration animates his base, and the harder line he takes on it, up to and including ending birthright citizenship, the better it’ll be received. It might work as a political strategy, but in terms of the chances of Trump actually ending birthright citizenship, there’s no chance.
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