This sponsored column is from the Law Offices of James Montana PLLC. All questions regarding this should be directed to James Montana, Esq., Janice Chen, Esq., and Taryn Durg, Esq., Practicing lawyers Law Office of James Montana PLLCAn immigration-focused law firm based in Falls Church, Virginia. The legal information provided here is general in nature. If you want legal advice, Contact us For a meeting
The Trump administration, as expected, issued a raft of immigration-specific executive orders shortly after taking office.
We anticipated this, and postponed our usual ad publication for a week so that we could share information about the executive orders with you. We were surprised by the breadth and variety of orders. They cover everything from birthright citizenship to eliminating the need for COVID-19 vaccinations for green card applicants.
Rather than do a superficial summary of all of them, we want to focus on the most important orders, one at a time, and so we’ll start this week with what we believe to be the most important of the executive orders. is Preserving the meaning and value of American citizenshipIt aims to end birthright citizenship for the children of certain illegal immigrants.
First, what does the command say? It states that children born on or after February 19, 2025 on US soil are not US citizens if the child’s mother (not the father!) is illegally present or has temporary legal status, and The child’s father (not the mother!) is not a US citizen. US citizen or green card holder.
Over here Laws of Independencewe seek to be measured in our analysis of changes in immigration law and policy. On this topic, it’s hard to keep our composure, because it’s not a close call – claiming to end birthright citizenship by executive order is absurd. This is already the subject of federal litigation, and we expect an injunction to be issued in short order.
As the Trump administration tries to overturn the injunction, the lawsuit could eventually go all the way to the Supreme Court through the appeals process. And if that happens, the administration will lose 9:0.
Since then, constitutional law has been settled. Wong Kim Ark v. United States that all persons born in the United States, except the children of foreign diplomats (and, as a matter of history, members of certain Native American tribes), are citizens of the United States, as the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution makes clear states that “[a]Persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, shall be citizens of the United States and of the State in which they reside.”
No one at the time seriously doubted that this was the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. This includes, amusingly, one of the dissenting justices in the case, Justice Harlan. Harlan worried loudly, in a lecture to law students, about the large number of Chinese immigrants “rooted[ing] Out of the American population in the West.
But he admitted with admirable candor that “[o]Of course, the argument on the other hand is that the very words of the Constitution embrace the matter” as in Wong Kim Ark’s. The Constitution is unambiguous on the subject, as the administration will discover in short order.
As always, we are grateful for your questions and comments, and will do our best to respond.
