How Trump’s birthright citizenship order could affect children of legal visa-holders
As immigrants across the United States grapple with President Donald Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship, legal experts are sounding the alarm about what it will mean for families on visas.
The order, issued Monday on Trump’s first day back in office, states that not all children born in the United States are automatically granted U.S. citizenship. Specifically, for children whose parents are undocumented or have temporary visas – for work, travel or school – citizenship will not be granted.
For some Asians, who… dominate Experts say high-skilled work visas such as H1B and student visas such as F1 can change your life. If a parent is not a U.S. citizen or permanent resident at the time of the child’s birth, the order states, their child will not become a citizen.
Experts say this is a direct violation of the Constitution and that the Supreme Court may not uphold it, but many immigrants are already afraid. Bethany Lee, executive director of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, says she sees Trump’s move as an attempt to exclude certain groups based on race.
“This is not just targeting undocumented people,” Lee said. “It targets people who come on student visas. It targets people with tourist visas. This, in the end, is about who Trump considers an American.
Twenty-two states and several other entities have filed lawsuits against the Trump administration challenging the order, which experts say violates the Fourteenth Amendment, which states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens.” of the United States and the country in which they reside.”
The Trump administration did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump’s order argues that the “subject to its jurisdiction” clause disqualifies children from these groups.
Experts say that in addition to being unconstitutional, the order has the potential to create some bureaucratic headaches, as some countries do not automatically grant citizenship to those not born in the country — even for children born to citizen parents — meaning some children may still be citizens. Temporarily stateless.
“There may be a whole generation of stateless children who are not citizens of the United States, but they are not citizens anywhere else either,” said Aarti Kohli, executive director of the Asian Law Caucus, one of the organizations suing Trump. Management on the system.
For families seeking asylum after experiencing political persecution in another country, the situation may be more complex.
“We have asylum seekers from Afghanistan and China. “Our plaintiffs are from Indonesia and are asylum seekers,” Kohli said. “It is highly unlikely that they will be able to obtain travel documents or identity documents from the countries they are fleeing for their child.”
Lee sees birthright citizenship as a distraction, she said, because the 14th Amendment is so clear. She doesn’t think the matter will stay in court, but she does think it could affect how attractive the United States is to potential immigrants from around the world.
“This executive order is intended to prevent Latino and Asian immigrants from coming to this country and building a life here, which is fundamentally inconsistent with the values of the United States,” Lee said.
It also has the potential to re-emerge a climate of violence and scrutiny toward immigrant groups, Kohli said. She pointed to the establishment of birthright citizenship in 1898, after a Chinese American, Wong Kim Ark, challenged the Chinese Exclusion Act before the Supreme Court.
“We lynched Chinese workers,” she said. “The atmosphere was incredibly racist, and yet our community fought and challenged that system.”
Lee and Kohli said they are concerned that Trump’s first days in office signal what is to come for immigrants in the United States.
“This is indicative of kind of the larger policy trend in the Trump administration, which is a real tightening of our immigration system, limiting access to visas,” Kohli said.
Lee says legal and undocumented Asian Americans, whose numbers are growing every year, must prepare for the next phase.
“I think there will be a lot of other battles to be fought,” she said.
