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| Maybe the white supremacist xenophobe Trump will soon ban multicultural baby dolls, too. |
As a new anti-immigration gimmick, Trump is signaling that he want to issue an executive order terminating birthright citizenship in the United States of America, or jus soli:
President Trump is planning to use an executive order to strip birthright citizenship from America's laws, rather than trying to change the Constitution through an act of Congress. The potential move, which would likely trigger numerous legal challenges, would seek to end the conferring of citizenship to children of non-citizens who are born in the U.S. — which is currently guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.The American constitution is pretty clear on this matter, though, so it's going to be a more difficult task than, say, starting multiple trade wars to deny citizenships to those born on U.S. soil:
"It was always told to me that you needed a constitutional amendment. Guess what? You don't," Trump said. He discussed the plan in an interview with Axios on HBO that is slated to air Sunday.
Birthright citizenship is granted in the 14th Amendment's first sentence: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."In any event, Trump claims he can single-handedly rescind the 14th Amendment:
The concept is based on jus soli — "right of the soil" — meaning that any child born in the U.S. has a claim to citizenship, even if their parents lack legal documentation to be in the country.
To change the law, Sherry said, you would need to either amend the 14th Amendment through Congress or ask the Supreme Court to overturn their earlier interpretation of the law and limit its benefit to people who are in the U.S. legally.To recap, the Trump administration is already using various means to significantly limit legal and illegal immigration to a country whose demographics are unpromising, with a birth rate well below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman. On top of that, Trump is proposing to disallow citizenship to a not-inconsequential number of those giving birth Stateside.
The president says he has the power to act on his own. "You can definitely do it with an act of Congress," Trump said in the Axios on HBO interview. "But now they're saying I can do it just with an executive order." He added, "We're the only country in the world where a person comes in, has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States for 85 years, with all of those benefits. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous, and it has to end."
So, who's going to be left in America at this rate to pay for all the retirement benefits of these old, angry white Trump voters? Like Trump, they have no seeming appreciation of basic economics unless they intend to work till age 80. To draw retirement benefits, there must be persons of working age paying into the system. If natives aren't willing to have children doing so, and you limit non-natives from working who can do so--as well as their children--then the system is unsustainable.
