US President Vows To End Birthright Citizenship With Executive Order

US President Donald Donald Trump says he plans to sign an executive order ending "birthright citizenship" for the children of non-American citizens who are born on U.S. soil, a move that would likely be challenged immediately in the courts over its constitutionality.

NEW YORK, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Oct, 2018 ) :US President Donald Donald Trump says he plans to sign an executive order ending "birthright citizenship" for the children of non-American citizens who are born on U.S. soil, a move that would likely be challenged immediately in the courts over its constitutionality.

Seeking to shore up support for Republicans ahead of the congressional elections next week, Trump told the Axios news website he would try to end the right of citizenship for U.S.-born children of non-citizens and illegal immigrants.

"It was always told to me that you needed a constitutional amendment. Guess what? You don't," Trump said in the interview with Axios set to air Sunday, just two days before the midterm election. "You can definitely do it with an act of Congress. But now they're saying I can do it just with an executive order." "We're the only country in the world where a person comes in and has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States, with all of those benefits," Trump said.

The president said, "It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. And it has to end." He said he has spoken with his legal advisers and that the move to issue the directive was "in the process." "It will happen, with an executive order," Trump said.

Such an executive order would likely face legal challenges immediately. According to the 14th Amendment, "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." Many legal analysts doubt the president's theoretical executive order would be acceptable to the Supreme Court.

"Here we have a situation where the text of the Constitution is quite clear and the Supreme Court has interpreted it that way," Garrett Epps, a constitutional law professor at the University of Baltimore was quoted as sayin by USA TODAY. "So, for the president to assert that he can somehow overturn the text of the amendment and Supreme Court precedent by executive order is what we would call an extravagant claim." Epps speculated that Trump might be floating the idea of the executive order as a political move ahead of the election and that he might never actually issue it, given its weak legal standing.

Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants Rights Project, agreed that the announcement of the potential executive order was politically motivated.

"This is a transparent and blatantly unconstitutional attempt to sow division and fan the flames of anti-immigrant hatred in the days ahead of the midterms," Jadwat said.

"The 14th Amendment is explicit on this question: persons born in the U.S. are citizens of the U.S. and of the states in which they reside," Sarah E. Turberville, director of The Constitution Project with the Project on Government Oversight, said.

"You can quibble over whether this is a good policy, but you can't quibble over what the Constitution very specifically says on the manner," she said.

Even conservative justices who look "to the very text of the Constitution to decide such significant questions" would be reluctant to uphold the president, she said.