Birthright Citizenship

We owe this tradition a more nuanced conversation

BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP

We owe this tradition a more nuanced conversation

Birthright citizenship has been a fact of the United States since the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868. The text of the Constitution’s relevant clause (Amdt14.S1) reads:

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.

The words here included have faced legal scrutiny in the past, most notably in United States v. Wong Kim Ark. The 1898 case challenged the citizenship of a man born on American soil to two parents who were Chinese citizens at the time of his birth. Though a 6-2 majority ruled in favor of Ark and his American citizenship, temporarily settling the matter, Amdt14.S1 has recently come under fire once again.

Executive Order 14160, entitled Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship was issued by President Trump in January of 2025. While the order explicitly recognized the “shameful decision” issued by the Taney Court in Dred Scott v. Sandford, it argued that the applications of the 14th Amendment have gone well beyond its intended purpose. The order demanded the rescission of Amdt14.S1 effective February 19th of the same year. The chief concern alluded to was its repeated abuse by foreign nationals seeking citizenship for children they had no intention of raising in the United States. Oral arguments for the ensuing case, Trump v. Barbara, were heard by the Supreme Court in early April of 2026.

The challenge raised in Trump v. Barbara is not simply partisan. Neither is it a mere matter of policy. The case gets to the very heart of what it means to belong to and in this country. At its core is a question we have struggled with since well before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. That is—what is Americanness, properly defined? This may well be the oldest question in our nation’s history. It was originally raised when the first settlers began to doubt their allegiance to the British crown, formally written in blood on July 4, 1776; it was asked yet again when Lincoln called forth state militia to suppress Southern rebellion; and it was redefined with the passing of the 14th Amendment.

Since the latter half of the 19th century, Americanness has been encapsulated, most simply, in citizenship. In other words, no single citizen is more or less American than another in the eyes of the law. I affirm this interpretation.

As a black American, I am leery of a common but prevalent falsehood that heritage means nothing—that Americans are constituted as such by an idea, and are not a people. Though it is not often intended maliciously, this claim disregards the legacy of all our ancestors who toiled on and for this land and for their right to call it home. This is a part of my own family’s story, whose names are found in census records well before the Civil War. They worked to build lives for themselves and their children, later risking everything for their nation in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. They are tried and true Americans, willing to die for the flag and the free world it represents. Because of them, I, too, am a blood-born American.

That being said, it is equally false to present Americanness as rooted solely in ancestry and tenure of the land. Were not the first Americans wayward Englishmen? What tangible reality separated patriots from their loyalist neighbors during the Revolution of 1776? July 4th represents the North American colonies’ formal issuing of separation from the British Empire. Yet the American spirit undoubtedly preceded that day. In much the same way, September 3, 1783 marked the official end of the war. Yet the signing of the Treaty of Paris did not truly birth a new nation. It did little more than recognize, on an international stage, a people who already were.

Coupled with a study of legal history, my own story has contributed to my recognition of just how nuanced the wider conversation surrounding Trump v. Barbara is or at least should be. I owe the recognition of my citizenship, at least in part, to the 14th Amendment. At the same time, my U.S. citizenship comes, not by virtue of being born on American soil, but because of my parents’ citizenship. I was born in the United Kingdom to two Americans temporarily residing overseas. Before 1983, this fact alone would have conferred British citizenship on me. Yet jus soli (right of the soil) was brought to an end when the 1981 British Nationality Act took effect on January 1, 1983. So, I am a citizen of the United States alone.

Only about 15% of the world’s countries maintain automatic birthright citizenship. I cannot state, as a matter of prudence, whether the United States should continue in this tradition. I hope only for us to consider in our 250th year that age old question—what is an American? There is no better time than the present.

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Abigail Ingram was born in Oxford, England and raised in Southern California. She is a graduate of Baylor University where she studied Political Science and History. Abigail was a 2024 Hudson Institute Political Studies Fellow, a research intern at the Cato Institute, a 2025 Acton Institute Emerging Leader and a Fall 2025 Fellow at the John Jay Institute. Her previous essay for the Journal of Free Black Thought was “The Return of Respectability Politics?”