Supreme Court to Rule on Birthright Citizenship

The 1800s were not all that different than our current times when it comes to scape-goating immigrants – the difference is that the target back then were Irish immigrants, an attorney told Supreme Court justices in April.

“They believed Irish Catholic immigrants were unassimilable and could never become Americans,” attorney Cecilia Wang said of the Know-Nothing Party, which was blaming a flood of Irish Catholic immigrants for a host of problems in the country.

The high court is considering whether the 14th Amendment to the U.S, Constitution means what it says: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States…”

President Trump, who has campaigned against undocumented immigrants since he first threw his hat in the ring for president in 2015, wants the court to adopt the novel view that the line was only meant to apply to the children of freed slaves, even though just about every court that has ruled on the issue in the last 200 years has found it means what it says: All persons [born here] are citizens.

Instead of going through the laborious process of amending the Constitution, Trump argues he has the right to end nearly 200 years of birthright citizenship with an executive order.

Even his own appointees to the Supreme Court seemed a bit skeptical of that claim during oral arguments. Six of the nine justices currently sitting on the Supreme Court are Catholics and some of them trace their roots to those Irish immigrants targeted by the Know-Nothing Party as the 14th Amendment was being written.

Ironically, some of those arguing to close the door on immigrants today are descendants of those Irish immigrants demonized in the 1800s.

Study after study has shown that immigrants, documented or un-, commit crimes at far lower rates than native-born Americans. But that has not stopped Donald Trump from running three campaigns for president falsely claiming that immigrants commit more crimes.

The justices are expected to rule on the Trump v Barbara case this summer and if they rule for Trump, the stakes are high for millions of immigrants and their children around the country.

California Senator John Conness was born in Galway and emigrated to the United States at age 15. He joined the Gold Rush to California and was elected to represent that state in the U.S. Senate in the 1800s. Even though Conness knew it could cost him his Senate seat, he proudly defended the rights of California’s Chinese immigrants against attacks from Pennsylvania nativist Senator Edgar Cowan.

Cecilia Wang, national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, stood before the Supreme Court in April to defend the long-held view that the 14th Amendment means what it says: that children born in the United States automatically are U.S. citizens.

In response to questions from the justices, Wang recounted the arguments between Senators Cowan and Conness on the Senate floor in 1866, the year the amendment was being drafted:

“Cowen says, ‘If we have this citizenship clause as part of the constitution, we are going to encourage these,’ what he called ‘gypsies,’ Roma, in Pennsylvania, whom he characterized as ‘invaders, trespassers and law-breakers,’ ‘We’ll encourage them to come into our country because their children will be citizens.’” Wang told the justices.

“‘Senator (John) Conness, in your state of California, you will be facing a mass flood of Chinese immigration if we adopt the citizenship rule,’” Wang said. “And Senator Conness, himself an Irish immigrant, says, ‘Yes, and I am voting for that. I believe in citizenship by virtue of birth without regard to parentage.’”

Conness lost his Senate seat after defending immigrants. Wang reminded the justices that the same arguments used against undocumented immigrants today were thrown just as intensely in the 1800s but were focused mainly against the Irish:

“At the time the framers are thinking about birthright citizenship, there had just been 15 or 20 years of unprecedented immigration from Ireland,” Wang said. “The Know-Nothing Party was dominant in the 1850s just a decade earlier, and they were vehemently opposed to Irish immigration.”

But unlike President Trump and his lawyers who argued the children of immigrants were never meant to become citizens, Wang said the Know-Nothings never tried to pretend that the 14th Amendment did not mean what it said.

“But even the Know-Nothing Party members of Congress believed that the children born in the United States to those Irish immigrants were citizens like anyone else,” Wang told the justices. “That’s the intuition that the framers of the 14th amendment had, contrary to the government’s arguments now. They wanted to grow this country. They wanted to make sure we had a citizenry to populate the military, to settle the country…”

Legal observers listening to the oral arguments said the justices’ questions indicate they had a hard time accepting the administration’s argument – though predicting how justices will ultimately rule is difficult.

Announcing his first campaign for president in 2015, Donald Trump said, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” His immigrant-bashing in the last 11 years has stayed most focused on Mexican immigrants and Venezuelan asylum-seekers, but also included immigrants from Haiti and other poorer countries he called “shithole countries” home to mainly Black and Hispanic people.

But his stepped-up enforcement and deportation efforts have already snagged many Irish immigrants who thought they were secure in their U.S. residencies. Ironically, voters in the Republic of Ireland ended birthright citizenship in 2004 by a margin of 79 percent, bringing Ireland into line with most of Europe.

Thirty-three countries around the world, mainly in North, South and Central America, have the U.S. model of birthright citizenship. President Trump erred when he posted in the minutes after April’s oral argument: “We are the only Country in the World STUPID enough to allow ‘Birthright’ Citizenship!”