UPDATE: ACLU CITIZEN ACTION: URGENT: Protect birthright citizenship & What is birthright citizenship, and which countries have it? 22 & 23JAN25

 THE fascist drumpf / trump-vance administration has begun it's assault on our democratic republic on many fronts, this being one of the most vile. The ACLU is fighting back with multiple organizations and 22 states and is asking us to sign their petition to congress and to e mail our representative and senators telling them to uphold the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing American citizenship to anyone born on American soil. The president does not have the authority to revoke a constitutional amendment just because they do not like it, if that was possible, depending on the president in office, slavery might still be legal, women might not have the right to vote and prohibition might be the law of the land. Please join the ACLU, click the link to take action to defend our civil rights and civil liberties and share this with family, friends and coworkers. 

UPDATE: HERE IS MY E MAIL TO REP SUBRAMANYAM D-VA:

I expect you to use all the resources you have available to defeat the drumpf / trump-vance administration's unconstitutional revocation of birthright citizenship as guaranteed in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. This is just another of their ploys to distract us one of his more nefarious actions like getting pete hegseth approved as Sec of Defense, a position he will never be qualified for. Please work with Sens Kaine and Warner to defeat the drumpf / trump-vance administration on these issues. Thank you.....

TO SEN WARNER D-VA:

I expect you to use all the resources you have available to defeat the drumpf / trump-vance administration's unconstitutional revocation of birthright citizenship as guaranteed in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. This is just another of their ploys to distract us from one of his more nefarious actions like getting pete hegseth approved as Sec of Defense, a position he will never be qualified for. Please work with Sen Kaine and Rep Subramanyam to defeat the drumpf / trump-vance administration on these issues. Thank you.....

TO SEN KAINE:

I expect you to use all the resources you have available to defeat the drumpf / trump-vance administration's unconstitutional revocation of birthright citizenship as guaranteed in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. This is just another of their ploys to distract us from one of their more nefarious actions like getting pete hegseth approved as Sec of Defense, a position he will never be qualified for. Please work with Sen Warner and Rep Subramanyam to defeat the drumpf / trump-vance administration on these issues. Thank you.....

"Denying citizenship to babies born on U.S. soil is illegal, profoundly cruel, and contrary to our values as a country." – Cody Wofsy, ACLU lawyer fighting for immigrants' rights Take Action This week, the ACLU and our partners sued the Trump administration over its executive order that seeks to strip certain babies born in the United States of their citizenship. We cannot and will not let his attacks on birthright citizenship stand and that's why we're reaching out. This order undermines a fundamental American principle and could tear families apart. Many expectant couples across our country now have to fear what will happen to their soon-to-be newborns, American-born children who could nevertheless be denied the basic rights and protections that should be their birthright, and instead be subject to uncertainty and vulnerability from the day they are born. It's egregious. So while our legal team takes on this fight in the courts – join us in taking this fight to your elected officials. Tell Congress: Donald Trump cannot deny citizenship to children born in this country. Take Action Now is the time to be loud and let our leaders know we can and WILL hold them accountable. Thank you for being with us, The ACLU Team

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Sign up for ACLU texts  We respect your right to privacy – view our policy. This email was sent by: ACLU 125 Broad St. New York, NY 10004 What is birthright citizenship, and which countries have it? Birthright citizenship, a practice that President Donald Trump is seeking to end, sets the United States apart from much of the world. But the U.S. is not alone in creating such a policy — and Trump is not the only leader to push for getting rid of it. Legal scholars and civil liberties groups say Trump’s order, which seeks to reinterpret the 14th Amendment in an effort to prevent migrants from crossing into the United States to have U.S. citizen children, is illegal, and 22 states have filed legal challenges to it. “Birthright citizenship is part of what makes the United States the strong and dynamic nation that it is,” Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement. Trump has falsely claimed that the United States is alone in offering birthright citizenship; in fact more than 30 countries do, including Canada, Mexico and many Western nations with a colonial history. More than 20 countries have reversed or rolled back their policies. “It has been challenged many times by countries pressed by immigration,” said Graziella Bertocchi, an economics professor at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in Italy who studies the effects of immigration and citizenship. “Trump is not the first.” What to know: Birthright citizenship, or jus soli, is a right enshrined in the U.S. Constitution that automatically grants citizenship to any person born on U.S. soil, regardless of their parents’ nationality. Trump’s order stipulates that his administration will no longer recognize automatic citizenship for children born on U.S. soil to parents who lack legal status, as well as children born to noncitizen parents who are in the country on temporary work, student or tourist visas. The majority of countries with unconditional birthright citizenship are in the Americas and the Caribbean, their policies a legacy of colonial times. French demographer Jean-Francois Mignot has written that, upon independence, the new countries allowed birthright citizenship to attract European immigrants and retained those policies to this day. All Central American countries have birthright citizenship, in addition to the United States, Canada and Mexico, according to the Global Legal Research Directorate of the Law Library of Congress: Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama. Costa Rica has birthright citizenship, but it requires registration. Most of the Caribbean also has birthright citizenship: Barbados, Cuba, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago. In South America, 10 of the 12 countries have birthright citizenship: Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Guyana. Pakistan in Asia has birthright citizenship, as do Lesotho and Tanzania in Africa and Tuvalu and Fiji in the South Pacific. The origins of birthright citizenship The history of birthright citizenship in the United States differs from other countries in that it was codified almost a century after the country’s founding in the 14th Amendment. The Naturalization Act of 1790 applied to only “free white persons,” but the 14th Amendment that ended slavery in the country also established citizenship for freed Black Americans, as well as “all people born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” The Supreme Court upheld this right in 1898 when it ruled that Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco but had been denied reentry to the United States after a trip abroad because of his Chinese descent, was a U.S. citizen. However, the U.S. adopted its jus soli policy from the United Kingdom, whose practice of birthright citizenship grew out of feudal traditions that assigned serfs born on a lord’s land to that specific lord, Bertocchi said. A number of European countries reversed their stance on jus soli after World War II, Bertocchi said, with much of Europe now practicing some form of jus sanguinis — citizenship through blood. The United Kingdom changed its laws in 1984 to stipulate that a child born on British soil was a citizen only if a parent was a legal resident or citizen of the United Kingdom. Ireland followed suit in 2004, allowing for individuals abroad to claim citizenship through an Irish-citizen parent or grandparent. What happens when policies are reversed? There have been few studies on the effect of reversing or rolling back birthright citizenship, Bertocchi said, and little agreement on the economic, cultural or social impact of such a policy change. However, she said studies on countries that have done the reverse and loosened their citizenship restrictions — rolling back jus sanguinis as Germany did after the fall of the Berlin Wall, for example — had found the effects to be overall positive for the immigrants. “They’re more likely to become educated, to participate in the political life,” she said. Most countries reversed course amid rising concerns around immigration, and the oft-repeated narrative that women were entering the country to give birth and get their children citizenship, Bertocchi said — a practice that Trump has referred to as “birth tourism” — though it’s unclear how often this happens. Around the world, moves to end jus soli have been criticized as xenophobic and cruel to immigrant families. The decision of the Australian government to deport a Tamil family back to Sri Lanka — two refugees and their two young daughters who had been born on Australian soil while their parents awaited a decision on their asylum claim — was met with public outcry. The family spent years in immigration detention before they were ultimately granted permanent visas. The Dominican Republic’s decision to reverse its birthright policy resulted in chaos: The country’s Constitutional Court had ruled that the policy change applied to anyone born after 1929, a move that left 200,000 Dominicans of Haitian descent stateless. While Trump’s executive order states that it will not be retroactive and will only affect those born within the United States after 30 days from the date of the order, immigration rights’ advocates are concerned that this order is only the start. “This opens the door to a principle that says that the president gets to decide who is subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and who is not,” said Martha S. Jones, a legal historian at Johns Hopkins University and the author of “Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America.” The executive order sends a dangerous message, Jones said. “The message is that we continue to harbor questions and skepticism about whether you belong,” she said. “The message is … if you believe yourself to be an American, you are going to have to fight for that.”