Several lawmakers are calling for Congress to pass a constitutional amendment banning birthright citizenship in the wake of the Supreme Court permitting the policy.
“Upset with the SCOTUS decision today?” Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) wrote on social media. “Call your senator at (202) 224-3121 and tell them to support my Constitutional Amendment to end Birthright Citizenship. We must protect the integrity of American citizenship.”
Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) noted that the Founding Fathers, nor those who authored the 14th Amendment, nor Americans who fought for the country’s freedoms “intended to establish a nation whose citizenship could so easily be purchased, whether through birth tourism of China’s communist party members or a vast border invasion enabled by faithless presidents.” He called the ruling “cheap and cheated citizenship.”
Senator Bernie Moreno (R-OH) urged Congress to “act now,” and Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) declared that “Congress needs to respond.”
Sen. Paul introduced a constitutional amendment in April that ends birthright citizenship. According to the document, a person born in the United States may only be considered subject to the U.S. if at least one parent is “a citizen of a national of the United States,” an “alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence in the United States whose residence is in the United States,” or an “alien with lawful states under the immigration laws performing active service in the Armed Forces.”
The calls for congressional action comes as the Supreme Court struck down President Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship.
“A child born on American soil and subject to American law was made an American citizen,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. The ruling added, “Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights— to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land.’”
