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1 1 (November 1, 2018)

handle is hein.crs/crsmthzzbqm0001 and id is 1 raw text is: The Citizenship Clause and Birthright Citizenship: A Brief Legal Overview Ben Harrington Legislative Attorney November 1, 2018 President Trump indicated in a recent interview that he plans to issue an executive order that will limit recognition of birthright citizenship to exclude the children of certain aliens, including presumably unlawfully present aliens. Absent a concrete proposal from the Trump Administration, CRS cannot analyze the idea in detail. However, the issue of birthright citizenship has come into public focus and is likely to be of interest to Congress going forward. Under federal law, nearly all people born in the United States become citizens at birth. This rule is known as birthright citizenship, and it derives from both the Constitution and complementary statutes and regulations. The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment states that [a]ll 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. The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), in turn, declares certain persons to be U.S. citizens and nationals at birth. INA § 30 1(a) more or less tracks the Citizenship Clause in stating that a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof' is a national[] and citizen[] of the United States at birth. (The INA also extends citizenship at birth to various persons not protected by the Citizenship Clause, such as those born abroad to some U.S. citizen parents.) Federal regulations-including those that govern the issuance of passports and access to certain benefits-implement the INA by providing that a person is a U.S. citizen if he or she was born in the United States, so long as the parent was not a foreign diplomatic officer at the time of the birth. Any executive proposal to restrict birthright citizenship would probably take the approach of interpreting INA § 301(a) to mean that the children of certain aliens are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and therefore do not acquire citizenship by virtue of birth on U.S. soil. A bill introduced in the House in the current Congress, like other legislative proposals from previous Congresses, would take a similar approach to defining the subject to the jurisdiction language in the Fourteenth Amendment. Following the President's statements, at least one Member of the Senate has announced plans to propose legislation along the same lines as the proposed executive order. Congressional Research Service 7-5700 www.crs.gov LSB10214 CRS Legal Sidebar Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress

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