Analysis and Comment
This is another reason Trump is fighting birthright citizenship:
Over the past 13 years, and probably as far back as the 80's and 90's, a China agency reports that 100,000 babies a year were born to Chinese Women giving the baby 'Birthright Citizenship'. Then they are taken back to China to be raised. When they turn 18 they are eligible to come here to vote based on 'Birthright Citizenship'. The 14th Amendment wasn't meant for that. And no, the Forefathers didn't write it. They were dead after the Civil War. The back story to Articles and Amendments are in the FEDERALIST PAPERS. Those are the 'notes' and the raw language.
The Assault on Birthright: Why America Must Secure Its Citizenship Legacy
The post above, circulating with urgent alarm, presents a stark claim: that for decades, the sacred privilege of American birthright citizenship has been systematically exploited by a foreign power. It alleges a calculated scheme where Chinese women, supported by state agencies, give birth on U.S. soil solely to secure an American passport for their child. That child is then raised abroad, only to return at adulthood to claim the full rights of an American—including, as the post darkly notes, the right to vote. The author’s final, pointed historical correction—“The Forefathers didn't write it. They were dead after the Civil War”—is more than a trivia fact. It is a crucial anchor for the conservative argument: that the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause has been warped far beyond its original intent, and that it falls to this generation to restore its true meaning.
From a conservative perspective, this is not merely an immigration loophole; it is a fundamental question of national sovereignty, constitutional integrity, and the very definition of what it means to be an American citizen. The principle at stake is one of *consent*. A nation is not just a territory; it is a political community, a shared social contract built on common values, history, and allegiance. Citizenship is the formal entry into that contract. The foundational conservative belief is that this contract cannot be imposed unilaterally by an accident of geography, especially when that accident is engineered by those who reject the contract’s terms.
The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, was a monumental and righteous achievement of the Reconstruction era. Its primary authors, the “Radical Republicans,” had a clear and noble purpose: to forever cement the citizenship of newly freed slaves, overturning the infamous *Dred Scott* decision and ensuring that no state could deny them the fundamental rights of Americans. The language, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens,” was crafted with this profound moral and legal mission in mind. The phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” was understood at the time to exclude those owing allegiance to another sovereign, such as children of foreign diplomats or, arguably, members of Native American tribes. It was never conceived as a global invitation for “birth tourism,” where individuals with no permanent tie to, or allegiance for, the United States could secure for their offspring the ultimate prize of American citizenship as a mere contingency plan.
This is where the alleged Chinese program represents a paradigm case of this distortion. It illustrates a cold, strategic commodification of American citizenship. The child is not born into the American community; they are parachuted into it long enough to claim a legal identity they did not earn and to which they have no formative connection. They are raised under a foreign, and often adversarial, political system, educated in its values, and then—as adults—hold the power to influence the destiny of the nation that was, for them, merely a birthplace of convenience. This turns citizenship from a sacred bond into a transactional asset, a loophole that undermines the very principle of patriotic allegiance.
Conservatives argue that this is why the issue resonates so powerfully with figures like former President Donald Trump, who has consistently championed an “America First” policy. The fight is not about the individuals in these narrow circumstances, but about the systemic integrity of our borders, our laws, and our civic body. It is about the sovereign right of a nation to define the terms of its own membership. To ignore this exploitation is to outsource our demographic and political future to the strategic planning of other nations. It renders our citizenship policy passive and reactive, rather than an active, deliberate choice about who we wish to join us in the project of self-governance.
The remedy, from this viewpoint, does not necessarily require a constitutional amendment, though that is a worthy long-term debate. It requires the political courage to correctly interpret the 14th Amendment as its authors intended. The executive branch has the authority to clarify, through regulation and enforcement, that children born to individuals who are not permanent residents or citizens, and who are not under the full and complete jurisdiction of the United States, do not automatically qualify for birthright citizenship. This would restore the critical link between citizenship and actual jurisdiction—a link of allegiance, not just of geography.
To dismiss these concerns as nativist or xenophobic is to willfully ignore the strategic reality. A nation that cannot define or defend the meaning of its own citizenship has lost a core element of its sovereignty. The conservative mission here is one of preservation and restoration: to preserve the original, solemn purpose of the 14th Amendment as a guarantor of rights for those truly part of the American community, and to restore the understanding that American citizenship is a privilege bestowed by a consenting nation, not a trinket to be collected by those passing through. It is about ensuring that the future American electorate is composed of those who share a fundamental stake in the nation’s fate, not those for whom it is merely a useful option in a global portfolio. Our citizenship is our legacy; it must be protected from those who would treat it as a loophole.
#14thAmendment #ILLEGALS #Immigration #BirthrightCitizenship #Citizenship #Migration