Birthright Citzenship

In ‘Refugee,’ by Alan Gratz, the stories of three traveling families are told. Each one is set in a different period of time where something bad is happening in the world. For instance, one story is about a boy named Josef. Him and his family were fleeing Germany during Hitler’s takeover and his poor treatment of Jews. Another story focused on was more recent. It had to do with a Syrian family who were trying to get away from the chaos in Aleppo; however, what I want to focus on for this blog post involves the third family. The family that left for Florida from Cuba on a little, packed boat.

Isabel during a point of unrest in Cuba. They were riots among a bunch of other things happening. There’s a lot I could talk about and connect to modern day, but there’s thing in particular that I’m interested in talking about. During this whole journey of trying to get to Florida by sea, Isabel’s mother is heavily pregnant. She gives birth while they’re practically on the shores of Miami. Isabel says something along the lines of how her baby brother is an American citizen, and soon, she’ll be one too. What she’s alluding to is called birthright citizenship. Basically, birthright citizenship is a legal right to citizenship for all children born in a country’s territory. This is regardless of their parentage. About 30 other countries offer this right. The United States is one of them; however, Trump recently voiced that he wants to take that away.

This article by the New York Times talks about how Trump wants to use an executive order to end this right. The president says that this right ‘is ridiculous’ and that ‘it has to end.’ That might be what he thinks about the issue, but there’s a lot of pushback coming from others. Some of these people are even in his own party (ex: House Speaker Paul Ryan). Legal experts against Trump on this one too.

In an article by the Washington Post, a lot of legal experts called the proposition unconstitutional; however, other big names like the Justice Department have declined to comment on the legality of what Trump says he plans to do. Will this be another dastardly act our government will let Trump get away with? Or will he be stopped like I hope?