Impact Over Intent: Why the Technical Perspective on Birthright Citizenship is Misleading

Trump v. Barbara, like many court cases, focused on legal technicalities. Extending those to broader debate, however, detracts from meaningful discussion around birthright citizenship, a principle granting automatic citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil.

In June, the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 to strike down President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship. Trump v. Barbara revolved around one key phrase in the 14th Amendment: “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” The Trump administration interpreted this to mean that children of parents unlawfully or temporarily residing in the U.S. lack the political allegiance that qualifies them for citizenship, despite their physical presence and subjection to all U.S. laws.

Birthright citizenship has long been a defining feature of American citizenship law. Yet the Trump v. Barbara case has spurred discourse about the wording, and by extension the literal intent, of the 14th Amendment. These technical perspectives, which seek to manipulate nuances in phrasing to justify restricting birthright citizenship, divert attention from the Trump administration’s true goals in the Trump v. Barbara case. The administration is not interested in debating legal jargon; rather, Trump is using birthright citizenship as another avenue to attack the rights of immigrants in America.

Trump v. Barbara is far from the end of Trump’s campaign against birthright citizenship. Just weeks after its Supreme Court defeat, the Trump administration issued two new executive orders. The first strips birthright citizenship for children born of the “alien enemy,” which includes citizens of countries currently at war with the U.S. as well as foreign ambassadors and diplomats. The second cracks down on “birthright tourism,” where people travel to the United States intentionally attempting to give their child American citizenship.

Birthright tourism is in practice rare, affecting only 9,000 of the 3.6 million U.S. births every year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, the administration’s continued attempts to exploit legal loopholes disregard the real-world implications. Despite the Supreme Court’s decision, Trump can and will persist in his larger goal of barring immigrants from American citizenship.

Instead of engaging Trump at the technical level, we must take a step back and consider the social and economic impacts when examining birthright citizenship. A report from the Center for Migration Studies of New York estimates that between 1975 and 2074, current adults and future children benefiting from birthright citizenship will have contributed 3.1 million workers to the U.S. workforce and $7.7 trillion to the U.S. economy. The impact of future children of undocumented or temporary immigrants, who are most at risk under these executive orders, is $1 trillion alone.

Additionally, research from the Migration Policy Institute and Pennsylvania State University projects that ending birthright citizenship for U.S.-born children of unauthorized immigrants would cause an increase in the unauthorized immigrant population by 2.7 million over the next 20 years. The Trump administration’s interest in birthright citizenship is less about legal battles and more about limiting who can call themselves an American citizen.

Although birthright citizenship has been framed as a technical debate in the Supreme Court, its real-world implications carry more weight: the undocumented immigrant population would continue to grow, deepening social inequality, and economic growth would be stunted without the contributions of first-generation Americans and their descendants. At Groton, we prioritize impact over intent because impact is what tangibly affects people’s lives. With birthright citizenship, we must do the same. Regardless of the contested interpretations of the 14th Amendment’s legal technicalities, what ultimately matters is how the Trump administration wants to use birthright citizenship to shape America’s future.