ISLAMABAD: The legal and political battle over birthright citizenship in the United States is expanding beyond the courts, with attention turning to proposals that would restrict the entry of pregnant foreign nationals after President Donald Trump's executive order seeking to end automatic citizenship for some US-born children faced repeated legal challenges.
Birthright citizenship is the legal principle that grants automatic citizenship to anyone born within a country's borders, regardless of their parents' nationality or immigration status. The principle is known as jus soli, or "right of the land."
The alternative is jus sanguinis, or "right of blood," under which citizenship is determined by the nationality or citizenship of one or both parents. Under that principle, a person born outside the United States may acquire US citizenship if one or both parents are US citizens.
For more than 150 years, birthright citizenship has been a defining feature of US nationality law. The modern legal basis for the principle is the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 after the Civil War to guarantee citizenship to formerly enslaved people and their descendants. In 1898, the US Supreme Court, in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, affirmed the constitutional interpretation that children born in the United States are generally entitled to citizenship regardless of their parents' nationality.
According to the Central Intelligence Agency, about 33 countries grant unconditional birthright citizenship, meaning a child automatically becomes a citizen solely by being born within the country's borders. Most of those countries are in the Americas, with a small number in other regions.
Those countries include the United States, Argentina, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Gambia, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Lesotho, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Uruguay and Venezuela.
According to World Population Review, most countries do not grant unconditional birthright citizenship. Instead, they rely primarily on jus sanguinis, under which citizenship is based on the nationality of one or both parents.
Across Europe, unrestricted birthright citizenship is uncommon. Countries including Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom require children born to non-citizens to meet residency or other legal requirements before they can qualify for citizenship.
Across Asia, unrestricted birthright citizenship is virtually non-existent. Countries including Japan, China, South Korea and Thailand determine citizenship primarily through the nationality of the parents.
A second US federal judge has blocked President Donald Trump's executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants, extending a series of legal setbacks for the administration.
Following the US Supreme Court's ruling limiting the use of nationwide injunctions, Trump's aides and MAGA allies have turned to a new proposal aimed at preventing pregnant foreign nationals from entering the United States, Axios reported.
The proposal would shift the immigration debate from challenging the citizenship rights of children born in the United States to restricting who can enter the country during pregnancy, opening a new legal and political battle over immigration, travel and citizenship.
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