Does birthright citizenship based on location of birth make sense today? The idea that anyone born on American soil is automatically a citizen is being questioned. Defenders are quick to point out that – as part of the Fourteenth Amendment – it is part of establishing equal rights for black people and it is one of the greatest achievements of the Republican Party. Also, aren’t Republicans supposed to support American exceptionalism? So why would they question this very exceptional part of the US Constitution?
We can dispense with the practical question. The Fourteenth is not going to be repealed. The hurdle for amending the Constitution is, rightly, very high, and there is no consensus behind this idea. But that doesn’t make the idea wrong.
American exceptionalism is the idea that the US is a nation founded on an idea – liberty. It is precisely that America is not a “blood and soil” country. This peculiar exception to general laws of citizenship arises not from the glories of American exceptionalism but from an especially shameful period of American history. America maintained slavery long after European countries had not only abolished it at home but were actively suppressing it in their empires. And it was no small thing. American slavery large scale and bound an ideology of racism. The Fourteenth was passed during an era of Republican dominance to ensure that, if Democrats ever regained control of Congress, they could not pass expressly racist citizenship laws designed to disenfranchise and dehumanize the descendants of former slaves. But Democrats abandoned slavery more than a century ago. They stuck to segregation for a shamefully long time, but even that is some decades in the past now. The problem that birthright citizenship was designed to solve has been solved.
But the problems it brings in its wake are still here. Any baby born in the United States, even if neither parent is a citizen or even legally present, is a birthright citizen. Every country has birthright citizens, but the location of the birth is rarely part of the equation. Why would it be? The children of citizens are normally citizens, but why should the children of people vacationing in the US, on a temporary work assignment there, on a layover at JFK, or even in the country illegally be citizens? One of the most prominent examples is not the child of an illegal immigrant from Mexico but the blond-haired and classically educated Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, whose father was employed at the UN in New York when young Boris was born. He has no connection with Latin America, but can conjugate Latin verbs with the best of them. Why should this most English of Englishmen be an American citizen?
Rules and incentives affect people’s behavior. If being born in the US makes someone a citizen then there is strong reason for pregnant women from poorer countries to want to be in the US at the time of their delivery. It grants the baby an enormous gift and privilege.
Nobody would invent this rule today if it did not already exist. It even feeds the myth that people have to be born in the US to be president, a silly idea used to attack Ted Cruz and even to cast a pall over John McCain, born when his father was serving abroad in the military.
Quentin Langley is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the University of Bedfordshire Business School as well as a freelance columnist published in the UK and all parts of the US. He blogs on social media and crisis communications at brandjacknews.com
Filed under: U.S. Politics
