A newly filed White House brief has unearthed a long trail of legal and scholarly opinion indicating that, historically, Americans did not regard children born in the United States to foreign parents as automatic U.S. citizens.
According to WND, the document directly aligns with the position taken by President Donald Trump when he signed an executive order declaring that children of illegal aliens are not, by virtue of birth on U.S. soil, citizens of the United States. That order triggered an immediate wave of lawsuits from the left, which has long treated birthright citizenship as an untouchable orthodoxy rather than a legitimate constitutional question.
If the courts ultimately uphold Trumps view, the ruling would strike at the heart of the lucrative birth tourism industry, in which foreign nationals enter the country, often on temporary visas or illegally, to give birth and then claim citizenship for their children as a pathway to permanent status. For decades, progressive activists and open-borders advocates have relied on this expansive reading of the 14th Amendment to create what critics call anchor babies and to undermine meaningful immigration enforcement.
The constitutional text at issue is deceptively brief, declaring that citizens are those born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof. The entire legal battle now hinges on what the framers of the 14th Amendment meant by being subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, and whether that phrase was ever intended to cover the children of foreign nationals who owe allegiance elsewhere.
The new White House filing, submitted in support of Trumps order, argues that the historical record is overwhelmingly on the presidents side. It cites a long list of 19th- and early 20th-century legal authorities, all contemporaneous with or close in time to the ratification of the 14th Amendment, who consistently rejected the notion that the children of transient foreigners or temporary residents automatically become citizens.
For example, Francis Wharton, in A Treatise on the Conflict of Laws from 1881, stated plainly, Chinese born of Chinese non-naturalized parents, such parents not being here domiciled, are not citizens. In the same year, Alexander Porter Morse wrote in A Treatise on Citizenship, The words subject to the jurisdiction thereof exclude the children of foreigners transiently within the United States.
The brief compiles literally dozens of similar expert opinions, painting a picture of a legal culture that understood citizenship as tied to allegiance and domicile, not mere physical presence at the moment of birth. Only in recent decades, under the influence of liberal legal theories and activist courts, has the simplistic formula of born here, citizen here taken hold in the public mind.
And if you questioned that idea, it wasnt just discouraged; you were branded some kind of unconstitutional traitor, the Revolver report said, describing how dissent from the modern birthright narrative has been aggressively stigmatized. And as you likely know, President Trump is trying to put an end to this farce. The moment he signed the executive order ending birthright citizenship, the left rushed to court with lawsuits already locked and loaded. So now, the fight over what actually makes someone an American is officially underway.
Revolver characterized the White Houses historical brief, with its extensive citations and archival material, as a bombshell nobody saw coming, not even the legal nerds. The report noted that the administration is not merely making a policy argument but is arguing history. And once you see what they put on the record, itll be clear to you why this entire birthright debate has been shut down for so long.
What Team Trump put in front of the Supreme Court of the United States was a very long paper trail showing how birthright citizenship has been understood for decades after the 14th Amendment was ratified. And the catch is big. Because that understanding looks nothing like the version were living with today. The 14th Amendment doesnt say that anyone born on US soil is automatically a citizen. It says citizenship applies to those born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof. That framing directly challenges the modern progressive reading that treats the jurisdiction clause as a mere formality.
Being subject to the jurisdiction didnt just mean being physically here. It meant a lot more. It meant allegiance and being fully under US authority not just temporarily hanging out on a layover while having loyalty to another country, the report said, underscoring that the framers were concerned with genuine political membership, not accidental geography. This understanding would exclude those whose presence is fleeting or whose primary loyalty remains with a foreign power.
According to the historical record laid out in the brief, legal scholars, judges, and commentators from the late 1800s into the early 1900s said the same thing over and over: children born to parents who were only temporarily in the United States were not automatically citizens. That means tourists, travelers, and foreign nationals just passing through were not treated as citizens by default. Such a view stands in stark contrast to the modern practice that has incentivized both illegal entry and short-term maternity tourism trips.
Additional authorities cited in the filing reinforce this traditional understanding. William Edward Hall wrote in A Treatise on International Law in 1895, In the United States it would seem that the children of foreigners in transient residence are not citizens, while Boyd Winchester observed in his 1897 work Citizenship in Its International Relation, The requirement of personal subjection to the jurisdiction thereof excludes children of persons passing through or temporarily residing in this country.
Henry Brannon, in his 1901 Treatise on the Rights and Privileges Guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, echoed the same principle, explaining, Mere birth within the American territory does not always make the child an American citizen Such is the case with children of aliens born here while their parents are traveling or only temporarily resident. Taken together, these sources suggest that the modern, expansive version of birthright citizenship is not a faithful reading of the 14th Amendment but a later invention that has served the interests of open-borders politics rather than constitutional fidelity.
As the legal battle over Trumps order advances, the question facing the courts is whether they will honor the original meaning of subject to the jurisdiction thereof or cling to a precedent that has fueled illegal immigration, birth tourism, and a de facto amnesty by maternity ward.
For conservatives who believe citizenship should reflect allegiance, responsibility, and the rule of lawnot a loophole exploited by those who disregard Americas bordersthe White House brief offers a long-overdue return to what the framers and early jurists actually said, rather than what modern activists wish they had said.
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