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Your citizenship, like mine, is an accident of birth. 

You were born here. So was I. The rub is I was born to immigrants who were not yet legal residents.

That makes me a birthright citizen under the 14th Amendment. That also allegedly makes me an “anchor baby.” I’m referring to the assertion that immigrants have come to the U.S. and have  babies only so they can gain  legal residency later.

Real life is more complicated than that for millions of immigrants who come to the U.S. for a variety of reasons — whether they are fleeing violence in their home countries or simply seeking a better life, as generations in our nation of immigrants have done. 

Does the immigration status of my parents really matter? How long ago  did your immigrant ancestors first step foot here? How many generations does it take for citizenship to be “deserved?”

The Constitution’s 14th Amendment says unequivocally that I’m as deserving as the accident of your birth makes you. If you are born here, you’re a U.S. citizen. Me, too. That’s birthright citizenship.

On Jan. 20, newly inaugurated President Donald Trump issued an executive order ending automatic citizenship for babies born to parents who don’t have lawful status in the U.S.  

In a recent 6-3 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court did not address  the constitutionality of Trump’s order. Instead, it ruled that lower courts have no power to issue nationwide injunctions,  voiding  district courts’  rulings that Trump may not deport people who have been U.S. citizens all their lives.  

After the ruling, some groups began the slow process to challenge the law in a nationwide class action lawsuit. But until the Court decides otherwise, the fundamental question whether someone is considered a U.S. citizen will have different answers in different states. 

Meanwhile, raids on immigrant communities continue.

The Trump administration is clearly emboldened. The Supreme Court’s ruling allows the ban on birthright citizenship to take effect in those 28 states that didn’t challenge the president’s initial executive order. And the administration is counting on the high court to see it his way on the constitutional question eventually.

At this point, I lack the confidence to say it won’t.

I understand the argument that  children born to U.S. citizens are more deserving than I am. “But my ancestors emigrated here legally,” say more “deserving” citizens. Never mind that the barriers to coming to this country legally have moved up and down. Today, even people with demonstrable asylum claims are being shut out.

Back in the day, if you showed up to these shores, you simply got in. It wasn’t until 1924 that the U.S. started enforcing quotas for national origin. Aside from immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe (deemed then as too foreign, i.e. not white enough), these quotas favored other white immigrants. And it specifically targeted Asians for exclusion.

This preference for white immigrants continues. White immigrants from, say, Canada and Ireland, don’t seem to be affected by this attempted purge.

So let’s be honest. Many of your immigrant ancestors were legal simply by default.

Other people will argue that ICE is targeting immigrants  who have committed violent crimes. A couple of big problems: according to the libertarian CATO Institute, 65% of those taken by ICE have no criminal record and 93% have not committed a violent crime. 

As a group, immigrants are a safer group than U.S.-born citizens. They commit fewer crimes.

The issue is not criminality. It’s race. All across the country,  Latinos are being detained because of the color of their skin.

Some folks insist that the 14th Amendment dealt only with the children of slaves freed after the Civil War. 

Here’s what the amendment says: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof (my emphasis), are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” 

Clearly, even those here without documents are subject to U.S. and state laws. That puts them under U.S. jurisdiction. The courts have confirmed birthright citizenship as early as the late 19th Century (United States v. Wong Kim Ark.).

Is military service an indication of deserving citizenship?

Immigrants and their children are populations the military covets for recruitment. About 5% of active-duty personnel are children of immigrants and 12%  of living veterans are immigrants or the children of immigrants.

Meanwhile, there is a shrinking pool of Americans able to serve, owing to their own criminality, fitness and, importantly, willingness.

So, maybe this ire for birthright citizens like me is about how much of a drain we are on government services and the economy.

But, bucking a trend for other Americans, the children of immigrants often surpass the economic success of their parents. That’s been true in my family and virtually everyone else with my background I’ve encountered.

So, who deserves to be a citizen?

I contend that a chief quality of those who  deserve citizenship is that they don’t take their citizenship for granted. They know their parents sacrificed much to make it happen. We are proud Americans. We belong here. And we deserve to stay.

A voter shows identification to an election judge. (Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — A Massachusetts federal judge on Friday blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order requiring states to mandate voters in federal elections provide documents proving their citizenship, ruling the measure would cause a significant burden to states and potentially harm voters.

U.S. District Judge Denise J. Casper issued a preliminary injunction stopping the order from going into effect while the case is pending.

“There is no dispute (nor could there be) that U.S. citizenship is required to vote in federal elections and the federal voter registration forms require attestation of citizenship,” Casper wrote in her order.

“The issue here is whether the President can require documentary proof of citizenship where the authority for election requirements is in the hands of Congress, its statutes … do not require it, and the statutorily created (Election Assistance Commission) is required to go through a notice and comment period and consult with the States before implementing any changes to the federal forms for voter registration,” Casper, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, continued.

Democratic attorneys general in 19 states brought the suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts after the president signed the order in March.

The order directed the federal Election Assistance Commission, which distributes grants to states, within 30 days to start requiring people registering to vote to provide proof of citizenship, such as a passport or state-issued identification that indicates citizenship.

Harm to voters

In her decision to grant the preliminary injunction, Casper said the states had shown that without a pause on the executive order, “citizens will be disenfranchised.”

“The States have also credibly attested that the challenged requirements could create chaos and confusion that could result in voters losing trust in the election process,” she said.

The executive order posed risks of irreparable harm to states “for at least three reasons,” Casper wrote.

She noted the cost and resources to implement the executive order, the federal funding states are at risk of losing if they do not comply with the order and discouraging voter participation.

Chilling voter participation is “the antithesis of Congress’s purpose in enacting the (The Uniform Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act) and the (National Voter Registration Act),” she wrote.

The order also would prohibit the counting of absentee or mail-in ballots that are received after Election Day. States set their own rules for ballot counting and many allow those that arrive after Election Day but postmarked before.

The states that brought the challenge to the executive order are: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.

Crackdown on immigrants

The executive order that Trump signed in March was a culmination of his rhetoric on the campaign trail about people without U.S. citizenship voting in federal elections and his vow to crackdown on immigration and carry out mass deportations.

Republicans have sought to use the rare examples of people without citizenship voting in federal elections, and local governments that allow immigrants to vote in local elections, to tighten restrictions on voter registration.

U.S. House Republicans in April passed a bill to codify the executive order.

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, conducted an analysis of election conduct from 2003 to 2023 and found 29 instances of noncitizens voting, just more than one per year.