Senators Graham, Cruz, and Bitt have introduced the Birthright Citizenship Act. The goal is to restrict the children of illegal aliens from receiving automatic citizenship. It ends birth tourism. It is not retroactive.
It would define “subject to the jurisdiction” in a way that limits citizenship. It would restrict it to children born to U.S. citizens, legal permanent residents, or those serving in the U.S. Armed Forces.
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— A Man Of Memes (@RickyDoggin) April 20, 2025
The Act
The bill’s proponents argue that birthright citizenship is a “pull factor” for illegal immigration and that it is being abused by “birth tourism,” where individuals seek to have children in the U.S. to gain citizenship.
The bill is likely to face legal challenges, as it would allegedly contradict the 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States. However, the 14th Amendment was established only for the protection of Black Americans who were enslaved and treated as non-citizens or partial citizens. It says nothing about legalizing children of people here illegally.
The bill is currently under consideration in the U.S. Congress.
Only the US and Canada allow this.
Constitutional Attorney Ann Coulter writes:
Birthright Citizenship means legal immigrants, pregnant women sneaking in on tourist visas, travelers on a three-week vacation, cheap foreign workers on “temporary” visas, and, in some cases, foreign diplomats.
There are laws on the books that say the kids born to diplomats don’t automatically become citizens simply by being born here, but — like so many of our immigration laws — these are treated as mere suggestions.
And that’s not all.
We’re the only country but two that confers automatic citizenship on children born to illegal aliens, or “anchor babies.” This is not “birthright citizenship,” which refers to children born to legal immigrants. (There’s nothing vulgar, bigoted, racial or sexual about the term “anchor baby.” It’s a boating metaphor: A geographical U.S. birth “anchors” the child’s entire family in this country by virtue of the baby’s citizenship.)
The US calls illegal immigrants brought in as minors “dreamers.” No other country does that. We make citizens of people who can’t speak the language. Outside of Sweden, no one does that. The US is the only country in the world that holds a lottery in which the prize is citizenship. The lottery has brought in terrorists, including Sayfullo Saipov and Akayed Ullah. Two-thirds of legal immigrants to the US now enter through chain migration, via a family reunification visa.
Americans have no say in who comes into their country and becomes a citizen. President Trump is trying to change that. He wants to return us to legal immigration, where we follow the laws that Democrats broke.
Birthright Citizenship was a footnote.
The very author of the citizenship clause, Sen. Jacob Howard of Michigan, expressly said: “This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers.”
In the 1884 case Elk v. Wilkins, the Supreme Court ruled that the 14th Amendment did not even confer citizenship on Indians — because they were subject to tribal jurisdiction, not U.S. jurisdiction.
That is how it was for 100 years.
Out of the blue in 1982, Justice Brennan slipped a footnote into his 5-4 opinion in Plyler v. Doe, asserting that “no plausible distinction with respect to Fourteenth Amendment ‘jurisdiction’ can be drawn between resident aliens whose entry into the United States was lawful, and resident aliens whose entry was unlawful.” (Other than the part about one being lawful and the other not.)
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