Among the executive orders President Donald Trump signed just hours after taking office as the 47th President of the United States of America, USA, was the one directing government agencies to stop issuing citizenship documentation for babies born in the US to parents without legal status.
Immigration advocacy groups have already gone to court. It is expected that more lawsuits will follow, given the controversial nature of the orders.
Meanwhile, there is need to understand the workings of the American citizenship by birth, and then what Trump’s executive order means.
The 14th Amendment
Passed by Congress June 13, 1866, and ratified July 9, 1868, the 14th Amendment extended liberties and rights granted by the Bill of Rights to formerly enslaved people.
A major provision of the 14th Amendment was to grant citizenship to “All persons born or naturalized in the United States,” thereby granting citizenship to formerly enslaved people.
Note that it was adopted in 1868 after the Civil War to clarify the status of formerly enslaved people.
However, it has long been read as giving citizenship to nearly all babies born on US soil.
This has seen many Nigerians, who have the means, preferring to give birth to babies in the US, as it makes them citizens with full rights as Americans.
Trump’s executive order
With Trump’s executive order, titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” taking effect from February 20, there is need to understand it workings.
*There will be no more passports, citizenship certificates, and other documents to children born in the US to mothers who are in the country illegally, or are temporary visa holders.
*Also, if their fathers are not citizens or legal permanent residents, the children cannot be American citizens.
*It means for a child born in the US to be an American citizen, at least one parent must be a US citizen or green card holder – that is, a legal (permanent) resident.
* The order is expected to take effect in 30 days.
Advocacy group sue Trump
However, a coalition of civil rights and civil liberties groups have sued President Trump over the new executive order on American birthright citizenship.
The lawsuit was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, State Democracy Defenders Fund and Asian Law Caucus on behalf of immigrant support organisations.
They contend that their members would have children ineligible for citizenship under the order.
It threatens children and their families “with a lifetime of exclusion from society and fear of deportation from the only country they have ever known.
“But that is illegal. The Constitution and Congress — not President Trump — dictate who is entitled to full membership in American society,” the advocates wrote in the complaint.
They filed it late Monday in U.S. District Court in New Hampshire just after Trump took oath of office.
The case is New Hampshire Indonesian Community Support v. Trump, 25-cv-38, US District Court, District of New Hampshire.
As Nigerians wait for how Trump’s executive order will pan out against the backdrop of dissenting voices, maybe the one-month window is “miracle time”.
Complete list of Trump’s executive orders
1. President Trump revoked 78 executive actions, executive orders, presidential memoranda, and other directives from the Joe Biden administration.
2. Regulatory freeze that prevents bureaucrats from issuing new regulations.
3. A freeze on all federal hiring, with exceptions for the military and certain other categories.
4. Federal workers to return to full-time, in-person work; no more post-Covid 19 remote work stayle.
5. Directive to all federal departments and agencies on the cost of living crisis.
6. Withdraws the US from the Paris Climate Agreement and informing the United Nations, UN, through an official letter.
7. Directed restoration of freedom of speech and prevent any future government censorship of free speech.
8. End to weaponisation of government agencies against political opponents.
9. Another executive order by Trump withdrew America from WHO.
