Last June, an opportunity to fix a major issue in United States policy was squandered when the Supreme Court wrongly decided to uphold birthright citizenship. This ruling upheld a tradition not found in U.S. constitutional law, but rather British common law, and prevented us from stemming the flow of anti-American citizens from overwhelming our society. Last week, President Donald Trump signed a pair of executive orders trying to right this wrong, and America’s domestic enemies are fuming.
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, tens of thousands of babies are born in the United States every year to parents who arrive with no intention of building lives here. These parents, often on tourist or other temporary visas, give birth, secure a U.S. passport for the child, and return home. The child grows up abroad, educated in another culture, loyal to another flag, yet holds full American citizenship from birth. That passport opens doors to our universities, our job market, our welfare system, and eventually our voting booths. It creates a class of dual nationals whose primary allegiance lies elsewhere. In an age of strategic competition with China, Russia, and other adversaries, this is not abstract. It is a national security vulnerability dressed up as constitutional tradition.
The original understanding of the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” was never meant to cover transient visitors or those who reject American sovereignty. The amendment was ratified in the shadow of the Civil War to secure citizenship for the freed slaves and their children, people who were fully subject to U.S. law and had no competing foreign allegiance. Extending it to tourists who treat American hospitals as a birth factory and then leave is a modern invention that the Court has now largely blessed.
President Trump’s response to this travesty was measured, targeted, and necessary. He signed two executive orders that work within the limits the Supreme Court left standing in Trump v. Barbara while still striking at the heart of the abuse.
The first order, “Continuing to Protect the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” directs federal agencies not to issue or recognize citizenship documents for children of two non-citizen parents in specific categories consistent with historical exceptions. These include children of alien enemies, members of designated foreign terrorist organizations or specially designated global terrorists. It covers children of foreign government employees, expanding beyond traditional diplomats to include embassy staff, official foreign agents, and certain international organization personnel who enjoy immunity. Critically, it addresses commercial birth tourism and surrogacy schemes: when parents engage in a commercial transaction specifically to ensure the mother (or a surrogate) is present in the United States for the purpose of giving birth. It also addresses births in certain U.S. territories where federal statute does not currently confer citizenship. No executive department is to treat these children as automatic citizens.
The second order, “Ending Birth Tourism,” is even more direct. It defines birth tourism as entry on a nonimmigrant visa for the purpose of giving birth on American soil or facilitating such entry. It delegates authority to the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security to deny visas, revoke travel authorization, bar entry, remove offenders, and target the operators and networks that profit from the practice. These are not theoretical businesses. They advertise packages, coach applicants on how to lie to consular officers, arrange housing near delivery hospitals, and collect fees for manufacturing American citizens. The order treats this for what it is: fraud against the immigration system and a commercial assault on the value of citizenship.
Together, the orders close the most egregious loopholes without attempting the broader rewrite the Court rejected. They restore the principle that temporary presence does not equal permanent political membership and that deliberate commercial exploitation of birth on U.S. soil will no longer be rewarded with a passport. None of this should be controversial, but obviously it is.
The reaction from Democrats and their media allies has been as predictable as it is revealing. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the moves “blatantly illegal.” Senator Ron Wyden labeled the president “unhinged.” Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi declared the orders unconstitutional and personal. Governor Ned Lamont of Connecticut and other Democratic officials immediately threatened legal challenges, framing the effort as an attack on the Constitution itself. Network coverage followed the familiar script: the orders are extreme, the scale of the problem is exaggerated, and any attempt to police who receives the privilege of citizenship is somehow un-American.
That framing tells you everything. If cracking down on foreign nationals who deliberately game the system to obtain citizenship for children they will raise in adversarial countries is treated as a moral outrage, then the critics have abandoned any serious interest in securing the country. They are not defending the 14th Amendment as written. They are defending a post-1960s policy of open-ended birthright that treats American soil as a global commons and American citizenship as an entitlement rather than a hard-won status. When the children of designated terrorists, foreign agents, or commercial birth-tourism operators are elevated to the same legal plane as the children of citizens and lawful permanent residents, the concept of a sovereign people collapses.
Citizenship is not a human right that attaches to geography. It is a political status that a nation bestows on those who belong to it. Most countries understand this. The United States, until recently, was an outlier in granting it so casually. Trump’s orders do not invent a new standard; instead, they put America well within European standards of citizenry.
However, unless Trump and Republicans make the argument to the American people about the necessity of such measures, they will be reversed. What is done by executive order can be undone by executive order. The American electorate’s notorious short-term memory has already forgotten the mandate they handed Trump to handle the southern border and the overwhelming number of illegal aliens in our country. Birthright citizenship and birth tourism weren’t even a high priority before, so unless the case is made, no one will care when Democrats reverse this.
Moshe Hill is a political analyst and columnist. His work can be found at www.aHillwithaView.com and on X at @HillWithView.