Republicans flood Congress with bills to confront Supreme Court on birthright citizenship
by Stephen Dinan · The Washington TimesThe Supreme Court may have crushed President Trump’s plans to restrict birthright citizenship, but congressional Republicans are seeking legislative alternatives that could restrict it in certain cases.
Some of the bills seek to maneuver at the edges of the high court’s ruling, clamping down on women who enter the U.S. on legal visas to engage in “birth tourism” or stripping automatic citizenship from children born to noncitizens in U.S. territories, such as Puerto Rico.
Other legislation amounts to a frontal attack on the justices’ reasoning by attempting to establish Congress’ right to define citizenship.
The result is a cottage industry in birthright bills.
“The Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship decision was an unprecedented assault on American sovereignty, and we must do whatever it takes to save our country,” said Sen. Jim Banks, Indiana Republican, who is sponsoring one of the bills to push back on the court’s ruling.
In the June 30 ruling, five Supreme Court justices held that the Constitution’s 14th Amendment guarantees automatic citizenship to nearly every child born on U.S. soil, including those born to illegal immigrants or temporary visitors. A sixth justice, Brett M. Kavanaugh, voted to strike down the order on separate statutory grounds.
That decision was authored by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and joined by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a fellow Republican appointee, and the court’s three Democratic appointees: Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Justice Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, ruled against the president on the basis of the Nationality Act of 1940, which explicitly granted automatic citizenship. He disagreed that the Constitution forbade Mr. Trump’s policy.
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Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch dissented in the case, known as Trump v. Barbara.
Sen. Eric Schmitt, Missouri Republican, called for a frontal attack on the court’s ruling.
His legislation would rewrite the Immigration and Nationality Act to explicitly declare that children of illegal immigrants and temporary visitors do not qualify for automatic citizenship. Mr. Schmitt has also proposed a constitutional amendment addressing birthright citizenship.
“It would restart our fight in the courts for sanity in birthright citizenship. While the Supreme Court’s decision threatens to destroy American citizenship, I am fighting to defend it,” he said.
Mr. Banks’ bill, meanwhile, is a complex legal attack. It would declare that illegal immigrants are “invaders” under federal law, then use one of the already recognized exceptions to birthright citizenship — children born to invading armies — and expand that to the children of the illegal immigrant “invasion.”
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A group of Republican senators has written a bill to clamp down on birth tourism, explicitly declaring that foreigners who seek to come to the U.S. with the primary goal of delivering a child to earn citizenship can be barred from the country — and deported if already here.
Rep. Morgan Griffith, Virginia Republican, has written a bill that would strip citizenship from future children born to noncitizens in Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands. American Samoa, which does not confer automatic citizenship, is not covered by the bill. Congress has the power to write citizenship rules for the territories.
The debate is at the ideas stage, but Republican leaders have signaled interest.
“If there’s some legislative fix, we’ll advance that,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, told “Fox News Sunday” after the high court’s ruling. “If it’s a constitutional amendment, as you know, it takes a little more time. But we’ve got to address this.”
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Immigrant rights advocates are preparing their defenses, and congressional Democrats, in a series of speeches on the House floor last week, said they doubted the birthright fight is settled.
“History teaches us that constitutional rights are rarely lost all at once,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, Missouri Democrat. “They’re chipped away slowly, one exception, one excuse, one precedent at a time, until Americans wake up and discover that what once seemed guaranteed has quietly disappeared.”
Andrew “Art” Arthur, a former immigration judge and congressional staffer who wrote immigration legislation, said some of the Republicans’ narrow proposals are on firm footing.
He said Mr. Griffith’s bill about the territories falls firmly under Congress’ power to define who in the territories is a citizen.
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He said Congress can try to restrict the entry of certain classes of migrants, including women coming to give birth for citizenship purposes. Indeed, the administration has already announced it will use existing tools to combat visa fraud.
The frontal attacks are tougher.
“The Supreme Court majority spoke fairly dispositively about that,” he said. “Anything that denies the child of illegal aliens who are here citizenship is probably going to run afoul of Barbara.”
He said Congress may have some latitude because the high court will give a congressional statute more deference than Mr. Trump’s executive order.
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Mr. Arthur said there may be yet another way.
Part of the high court’s ruling relied on an interpretation of English common law, finding that children born on English soil were generally deemed to be subject to the king and thus entitled to citizenship.
Mr. Arthur said the formulation is odd to adopt for the U.S., which was founded explicitly to reject the authority of the king as sovereign.
He said Congress could pass legislation expressly stating that pre-independence common law would not apply to determinations of birthright citizenship. The justices would then have to confront whether Congress had that power.
“That presents a different question than the one the Supreme Court considered,” Mr. Arthur said.
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Stephen Dinan
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