Why the US has birthright citizenship

[Music] in the years after the American Civil War the US made three amendments to its National Constitution that among other things established rights for African-Americans one of those amendments abolished slavery one granted the right to vote to African-American men and one among other things gave African-Americans the right of citizenship but this one the 14th Amendment dealing with citizenship it was interesting it never actually used the words African or black or race or former slaves instead it contained a rule that with some exceptions being born in the US would make you a citizen of the US

Birthright citizenship if you're born here you're a citizen here birth birth Birthright citizenship ending Birthright citizenship in 2025 on Donald Trump's first day as again president he signed an executive order to end Birthright citizenship for the children of anyone temporarily or unlawfully in the US over the next few weeks that order was blocked by more than one federal judge with one of the cases calling Birthright citizenship a foundation of our democracy and as of this video we don't actually know how this will all shake out if the Trump Administration will back down if the Supreme

Court will back them up but Trump had had his eye on Birthright citizenship for some time number one the 14th Amendment is very questionable as to to whether or not somebody can come over have a baby and immediately that baby is a citizen and he hasn't been the only one to feel that way today 40% of Americans think that the children of undocumented immigrants should not be given Birthright citizenship the meaning of the 14th Amendment didn't just come up for a debate this year it's actually an argument we've been having with ourselves as a country

going way back and a lot of that debate has been around this idea of who is supposed to get citizenship and who isn't like for example the 14th Amendment meant to give citizenship to freed slaves it was never meant to give citizenship to foreign aliens so okay is that true what does the law actually say about Birthright citizenship and why have Americans been arguing over it for almost 200 [Music] years so in this video we're going to look at the three moments that made us a country where everyone born here is a citizen we're going

to start with actually with none of these first we're going to start quickly here at the original US Constitution which said nothing about who is and is not a citizen the idea that you're a citizen if you're born here that existed but it was more of a legal assumption at the time inherited from English common law was just simply understood if you were born in the realm you were subject of the king which came from this old Roman idea of use solely or the right of soil as opposed to the right of blood where citizenship

is passed down from your parents but because usol is more of a principle than a law for the first 70ish years of the US there aren't really specific rules on who is and isn't born an American citizen until 1857 just a few years before the Civil War a time when the US looks like this some states where slavery is legal some where it isn't and around this time an enslaved man is taken by his enslaver from a slave state into free territory and he eventually files a lawsuit saying that entering free territory should have made

him a free man his case eventually goes to the US Supreme Court in Washington DC and it will come to be known as The Dread Scott Decision that's his name and what the court says is neither Scott nor his family are free and they add that he's also not a citizen and in fact they say that as a rule a person of the African race cannot be a US citizen by birth or otherwise the Supreme Court ultimately concludes that they weren't considered to be the part of the people of the United States part of the

citizenry of the United States at this time there are many free black people in the free states of the US but this court decision officially says that the country now has two classes of people those who are citizens or who can become citizens or whose children can be citizens and those for whom none of that applies and within a few years ideas like that have literally torn the us apart these states secede and these states go to war against them partly to eliminate slavery and that two- tiered system and they win so now the Civil

War is Over and the Victorious North decides to undo the Dread Scott Case by passing the first American law to say that people born here are citizens the Civil Rights Act of 1866 problem number one the president at the time has some objections to this and in a letter to Congress he complains that in addition to African-Americans Birthright citizenship is also going to make Gypsies and Chinese people citizens but Congress actually has enough votes to pass it over the president's objections and it becomes law but problem number two there would always be the the risk

that the civil rights laws could be modified by a subsequent Congress a future Congress could theoretically repeal the law so to make Birthright citizenship a more permanent part of the law they also decide to write it into a constitutional amendment what will become the 14th Amendment it says all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States this is the language that will put Birthright citizenship into the US Constitution but it will also eventually be the source of some debate because of this line the

qualifier subject to the jurisdiction of the US for example let's say an immigrant comes to the US and then has a child are they subject to the US's jurisdiction the amendment itself doesn't elaborate on this but before Congress passes the 14th Amendment as they debate it they actually keep pretty good records of their conversations for example one Senator asks the rest of the Senate won't this give citizenship to the children of Chinese people another senator says yes the child of an Asian is as much a citizen as the child of a European the debates over

the 40th Amendment matter because they showed that they understood that children of immigrants would become citizens at Birth under this rule so it's with that understanding that Birthright citizenship enters the Constitution a big majority of Congress votes for it but not everyone for example this guy the one that was concerned about Chinese people becoming citizens he does not vote for it and that is actually important the 14th Amendment becoming law doesn't necessarily mean that Everyone likes it remember that it's going to come back later and after a quick break we're going to talk about where

that debate goes next and how it creates the 14th amendment's first big test promise this will be fast High I'm Adam I produced this video if you're finding it at all interesting you should know that videos are actually just one part of what we do at Vox there's a whole staff of reporters at vox.com whose job it is to help you understand the world I made this video because I wanted to better understand how we became a country that on one hand offers Birthright citizenship but on the other is a place where a lot of

people are mad about that like we say in the video it's about 40% of all Americans as you can see for yourself it's also about 90% of YouTube commenters Box's mission is not necessarily to tell you the news there's lots of people doing that it's overwhelming as is what we try to do is give you the context and hopefully the insight to understand what is important and what is distraction if that mission sounds like something you might want to lend your support to you can do that at vox.com SL memberships that's it thanks okay so

so far in the story we've seen both a president and a senator voice kind of the same concern about specifically Chinese people becoming American citizens and this is actually pretty emblematic of this time period when there are a growing number of Chinese laborers in the US along with a growing sentiment from some they don't belong here and in 1882 Congress passes the Chinese Exclusion Act and it says among other things Chinese immigrants can't become citizens though doesn't say anything about their children this is only meant to last 10 years but it ends up being the

first of several Chinese Exclusion acts that remain in effect until 1943 and it's in that context that a few years after the Chinese Exclusion Act a guy from San Francisco goes to visit his family in China a few months later he comes back and is denied entry to the US he says but I was born here I'm a citizen and his case eventually goes to the Supreme Court the guy's name is Wong Kim Arc he's around 25 works as a cook has has a wife and child back in China and his case is kind of

the perfect test for the 14th Amendment which remember says you're a citizen if you're born here and if you're subject to the jurisdiction of the US so here's the question when Wong was born here to his Chinese immigrant parents who were not US citizens was he under the jurisdiction of and thus a citizen of the place he was born or was he a citizen of the place his parents were from in 1898 the court makes their decision Wan k Mark is a citizen the court says there's three types of people in the US who are

not subject to the country's jurisdiction diplomats certain Native Americans and invading forces occupying territory their children are not citizens at Birth but other than that partly because of what is written down in those Congressional debate records the court rules that subject to the jurisdiction was intended to mean pretty much everyone here including immigrants and their children everyone in the US is subject to the jurisdiction of the US and thus everyone born here is a citizen and that basically Remains the legal consensus to this day for more than a century officials have acted in concer it

is the repeated recognition by everyone within the legal system that this is the correct meaning of the 14th Amendment but a legal consensus it's not necessarily the same as a popular [Music] consensus in the 1980s and 1990s the population of undocumented immigrants starts to go up and Birthright citizenship comes back as a political issue a growing chorus of Republican lawmakers are demanding another look at the 14th Amendment subject to the jurisdiction illegals don't fall under that just like diplomats children if the 14th Amendment had not existed my great-grandparents would not have been citizens disagreement over

Birthright citizenship is not new in fact I'm going to tell you one more story about the 14th Amendment way back when Congress originally voted for it part of why an amendment giving citizenship to African-Americans was able to pass with these kinds of margins is because at the end of the Civil War only these states were even represented in Congress but for the 14th Amendment to become official to become part of the Constitution it also had to be ratified voted for by three quarters of all the state governments and that did not happen at first none

of these states wanted to ratify it and then Congress made them they said these states will only be readmitted to Congress if they ratify this amendment you have lost a war and these are the terms of peace and one way to look at that is that this amendment is kind of different it isn't just some law from a long time ago it's a treaty it represented the leaving behind of an old country and the formation of a new one today just like back then the president is someone who doesn't agree the birthright citizenship should apply

to everyone even though to be clear a majority of Americans think it should and once again it seems like the final call will be up to the US Supreme Court which for more than 100 years has recognized again and again that Birthright citizenship is the law we'll see what happens this time [Music]