President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to end birthright citizenship, which would undo 150 years of how the U.S. has handled the issue.
Trump made the comments during NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. He was asked if he still plans to end birthright citizenship, to which he said, “Yeah, absolutely.”
Birthright citizenship means that anyone born in the country automatically becomes a citizen. This includes children of undocumented immigrants and tourists, and students in the U.S. on short-term visas.
Trump said he would be open to working across the aisle to keep so-called Dreamers in the country, who are undocumented people who came to the U.S. as children.
But he also opened the door to deporting U.S. citizens to avoid separating families.
“I don’t want to be breaking up families, so the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back,” he said.
The 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified in 1868, guarantees birthright citizenship.
“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,” it states.
The amendment guarantees this right “regardless of their parent’s immigration or citizenship status,” the American Immigration Council states on its site. “For over a century, the U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted the 14th Amendment as conferring U.S. citizenship automatically to anyone born on U.S. soil.”
The 14th Amendment was estabished following the Civil War to overturn the Supreme Court decision Dred Scott v. Sandford, which denied citizenship to African Americans.
Meet the Press host Kristen Welker mentioned the 14th Amendment, asking Trump how he would go about getting around it.
“We’re going to have to get a change,” he said, adding, “We have to end it.”
Trump said he’s planning on changing the practice using executive action, noting that there are other options.
Trump told Axios in 2018: “You can definitely do it with an act of Congress … but now they’re saying I can do it just with an executive order.”
But both legal and political leaders have poured cold water on Trump’s claims, with former Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan saying that same year: “You cannot end birthright citizenship with an executive order.”
The “14th Amendment is pretty clear, and that would involve a very, very lengthy constitutional process,” he added.
Changing the Constitution requires support by a two-thirds majority in both chambers of Congress. In addition, an amendment must also be ratified by three-fourths of all state legislatures. Republicans have a 53 to 47 majority in the Senate and a 220 to 215 majority in the House, meaning that the GOP doesn’t have a two-thirds majority in either chamber.
The American Immigration Council noted in 2011 that the possible end of birthright citizenship would cause parents to have to prove their children’s citizenship status.
“Our birth certificates are proof of our citizenship. If birthright citizenship were eliminated, U.S. citizens could no longer use their birth certificates as proof of citizenship,” the council said.
