Republicans Seek to ‘Trump’le American Right

JENNIFER FAN
MADELEINE PARAGAS
Staff Writers

Birthright citizenship has been an American right for about 150 years. Under the Fourteenth Amendment, anyone born in U.S. territories is given the legal right to citizenship, regardless of their parents’ status. Immigrants, documented or not, benefit from this amendment, as their children will not have to go through the lengthy and complicated process to become legalized American citizens.

However, Republicans have been rallying to end birthright citizenship in America for years. According to CNN, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump believes that the Fourteenth Amendment has helped save millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation due to their “anchor babies,” children born from undocumented immigrants and are legal U.S. citizens. Trump and other Republicans also claim that ending birthright citizenship will greatly diminish the number of undocumented immigrants and lower the taxpayer costs for legalized citizens. To Republican candidates, the right to natural born citizenship is abused by immigrants and, thus, citizenship should instead be granted solely by citizenship tests. However, this Republican proposal will cause problems than it will solve.

Although birthright citizenship does create a hefty sum for American taxpayers, it would actually cost more to abolish this right. According to ABC, undocumented immigrants and their children cost an additional $100 billion in tax dollars each year. Nullifying birthright citizenship would cause taxpayers to pay an estimated amount of $600 for every child that is processed to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Aside from granting citizenship to millions of children, the Fourteenth Amendment has played a massive role in American history. Since its implementation after the Civil War, all former slaves became legal citizens with the same rights as whites. Revoking this historic constitutional legislation will not only be hard to pass by Congress, it would ruin America’s image of a land for second chances and new beginnings. Immigrants come to this nation in order to give their children opportunities that they could never acquire in their homeland.

If Republicans prevail in removing this right, they would take these chances from the next generation of children to prosper and significantly contribute to the greater good of America’s future.