Latest news with #theMeaningandValueof
Business Insider
03-08-2025
- Politics
- Business Insider
U.S. to implement Trump's executive order restricting Birthright Citizenship
The United States Social Security Administration (SSA) has announced plans to enforce President Donald Trump's executive order (EO) restricting automatic birthright citizenship, as soon as it takes effect. The SSA intends to enforce an executive order signed by President Trump limiting automatic birthright citizenship. The order applies to children born after February 19, 2025, and restricts citizenship to children of U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents. This policy shift could significantly affect immigrant populations, particularly their access to citizenship and social benefits. The executive order, titled ' Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,' was signed on January 20, 2025. It is expected to apply to children born after February 19, 2025, with enforcement scheduled to begin on July 27, 2025. This move will alter decades of established practice that grants citizenship to nearly all individuals born in the U.S. and will affect a wide range of foreign nationals, including African migrants, students, and professionals residing legally or temporarily in the United States. According to Reuters, the SSA's plans signal the administration's readiness to proceed with enforcement as soon as legal challenges are cleared. Under the current constitutional framework, children born in the U.S. are automatically granted citizenship regardless of their parents' immigration status. However, the new policy would limit that right to children born to U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents. ' With respect to citizenship, an SSN applicant may currently demonstrate U.S. citizenship by providing a birth certificate showing a U.S. place of birth, ' the SSA stated. CNN reports that, 'Several rulings issued by federal courts this month have ensured that that policy will not take effect for now, and the guidance documents acknowledge that reality.' However, preparations for implementation are underway. 'The government is preparing to implement the EO in the event that it is permitted to go into effect,' a USCIS memo read. Key Changes to Citizenship Verification Previously, Social Security Numbers (SSNs) were issued to U.S.-born applicants based solely on a birth certificate indicating a place of birth within the country. Under the new order, that will no longer be sufficient. Applicants born after the EO's implementation date will be required to provide proof that at least one parent was a U.S. citizen or a lawful permanent resident at the time of their birth. 'To comply with the EO, SSA will require evidence that such a person's mother and/or father is a U.S. citizen or in an eligible immigration status at the time of the person's birth, ' the SSA stated. The Social Security Administration will revise its internal manuals and application procedures to reflect these changes. Updated procedures will require applicants to submit one or more of the following: 1. Certificate of Naturalization 2. Certificate of Citizenship 3. U.S. Passport issued under the EO 4. U.S. Citizen Identification Card issued by the Department of Homeland Security 5. Consular Report of Birth Abroad 6. Other verification from the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Department of State, or federal/state court records 7. A U.S. birth certificate plus evidence of a parent's U.S. citizenship or eligible immigration status The Security administration added that children of green card holders may also qualify, but only with verified documentation such as a Permanent Resident Card (Form I-551), a Machine Readable Immigrant Visa (MRIV) with a Temporary I-551 stamp, or relevant DHS records. ' Once the EO takes effect, a birth certificate showing a U.S. place of birth will not be sufficient documentary evidence of U.S. citizenship for persons born after the EO takes effect, ' the SSA said. Implications for African Families The policy shift is expected to impact thousands of African nationals living in the U.S. on temporary work or student visas, including those under H-1B and F-1 classifications. It may also affect African families who travel to the U.S. for childbirth or educational purposes, expecting their children to gain automatic citizenship. For African countries with large diaspora populations in the U.S. including Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa; the loss of automatic citizenship rights could have long-term impacts, including reduced access to public benefits, limited legal protections for children, and potential disruptions to remittance flows and transnational family stability. On the brighter side, CNN reports that immigration rights advocates have filed legal challenges against the policy and have emphasized that the newly released SSA and USCIS guidance is 'meaningless' so long as the courts continue to block enforcement.
India Today
29-07-2025
- Politics
- India Today
Parents could face new checks for US-born children's documents: Report
The Trump administration's new guidelines now require parents, including US citizens, to verify their immigration status to secure passports or Social Security numbers for their newborns. It is part of the Trump administration's larger clamp down on immigration, including on birthright documents, released by half a dozen federal agencies in recent days, provide the clearest picture yet of how the government could implement the proposed changes – despite the fact that the Executive Order (EO) is currently on hold due to court challenges, according to new documents are a direct result of a Supreme Court decision last month that allowed the administration to develop plans for ending birthright citizenship, CNN reported. The US Supreme Court last month ruled that lower court judges have less power to stop presidential orders, which President Trump described as a major several federal court rulings this month have since placed the policy on hold, meaning the executive order has not yet been new documents openly acknowledge this legal uncertainty, making it clear that while the groundwork is being laid, the rules cannot yet be including US citizens, may face extra steps to prove their immigration status when getting passports or Social Security numbers for their DEPARTMENT DOCUMENTS OUTLINES NEW PASSPORT APPLICATION RULESState Department documents explain how officials would be required to "request original proof of parental citizenship or immigration status" to proceed with processing a passport application. "This information will be necessary to determine if those applying for a passport are US citizens," the three-page document reads, the broadcaster guidance from the Social Security Administration (SSA) says that a birth certificate showing a US place of birth will no longer be sufficient evidence of citizenship for obtaining a Social Security from the Department of Health and Human Services, Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the Department of Agriculture details how these agencies would verify children's citizenship for social Department of Homeland Security's US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued a four-page memo to clarify legal questions about implementing Trump's order, primarily defining who is covered by and exempted from the those exempted from the president's policy, according to the USCIS memo, are children of asylees and refugees. Until now, it wasn't clear whether the Trump administration would subject those groups of non-citizens to the TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IS PROPOSINGAccording to CNN, the executive order signed by President Trump in January – titled "Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship" – would deny US citizenship to children born in the US if their parents are undocumented immigrants or even temporary legal federal court rulings have blocked the policy from taking effect for now, as acknowledged by the guidance federal judge last Friday blocked the Trump administration's attempt to end birthright citizenship for children born in the US to undocumented or temporary immigrant parents, calling the move unconstitutional and legally illogical."However, the government is preparing to implement the EO in the event that it is permitted to go into effect," CNN reported, citing the USCIS rights advocates emphasised on Monday that the newly released guidance is irrelevant while courts continue to block the policy's Cody Wofsy denounced Trump's Executive Order as "unconstitutional"."Nothing in this guidance remotely changes the bottom line that this executive order is unconstitutional and cruel. Everyone in the country remains protected by our class action, and we will keep fighting to ensure this order never goes into effect," CNN quoted Wofsy, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, which convinced a federal judge in New Hampshire to block Trump's order via a class-action lawsuit, as Jersey Democratic Attorney General Matthew Platkin, who is leading a multi-state challenge to Trump's policy, told CNN that "whatever the promises in this guidance, we remain confident that President Trump's unconstitutional attempt to terminate birthright citizenship will never take effect given the nationwide injunctions that have issued here."- EndsMust Watch
India.com
26-07-2025
- Politics
- India.com
Big setback for Donald Trump as Federal Court strikes down birthright citizenship order across US; how will it affect Indians?
(Image: Reuters) New Delhi: A federal court in America has again stayed President Donald Trump's order which said that if a child's parents are living illegally in America, then that child will not get American citizenship. This is the third time that the court has stopped Trump's order from being implemented. The court also said that the final decision on this matter will be taken by the Supreme Court, but until any order comes from there, this rule of Trump will not be implemented. When was the order passed? Trump had banned Birthright Citizenship by signing an executive order on January 20, the day of his swearing-in. A few days after this, the US Federal Court had stayed President Donald Trump's decision to end the right to birthright citizenship for 14 days. Earlier on June 28, the US Supreme Court had given a decision in favour of President Trump. The Supreme Court had said that the judges of the lower courts cannot stop Trump's birthright citizenship order across the country. They should reconsider their order. What did the US Supreme Court say? The Supreme Court had said with a majority of 6-3 that a federal judge alone cannot decide to stop policies across the country. Now if a case like Trump's order has to be stopped, then many people will have to sue together, not just one state or person. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who wrote the decision, had said – the job of federal courts is not to monitor government orders. Their job is to resolve matters according to the powers given by Parliament. However, the court did not give any immediate decision on Trump's order and also ordered not to allow Trump's order to be implemented for 30 days i.e. till July 28. This means that for now, children born in America will continue to get citizenship, as they used to get earlier. Under which 3 situations citizenship is not granted by Trump's order? The executive order by which Trump abolished the birthright citizenship law is named 'Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship'. This order refuses to grant American citizenship in 3 situations. If the mother of a child born in America is living there illegally. At the time of the child's birth, the mother is a legal but temporary resident of America. The father should not be a US citizen or a legal permanent resident at the time of the child's birth. The 14th Amendment to the US Constitution gives the right to birthright citizenship. Through this, children of immigrants living in the US also get the right to citizenship. What will be the effect on Indians? According to the data of the US Census Bureau till 2024, about 54 lakh Indians live in America. This is about one and a half percent of the US population. Two-thirds of these people are first generation immigrants. That is, they went to America first in the family, but the rest are citizens born in America. If the Supreme Court gives an order in favour of Trump's bill, then it will become difficult for first generation immigrants to get American citizenship. However, if it gives an order against it, then citizenship will remain as before.
Yahoo
16-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Supreme Court Hands Trump ‘GIANT WIN' in Birthright Citizenship Case
The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that lower federal courts should not have the power to issue nationwide injunctions blocking presidential orders — no matter how obviously unconstitutional such an order may be. The decision is a monumental gift to Donald Trump's administration, which is seeking to implement much of its anti-immigration and other policy priorities through executive orders. The ruling was 6-3, with the court's six conservative justices opting to restrict the power of the lower courts. The ruling comes in response to the Trump administration's argument that the judiciary does not have the power to block the president's executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship, a right enshrined in the Constitution. The Supreme Court's ruling effectively restricts the injunctions that blocked the birthright citizenship order, and could potentially apply to other authoritarian actions by Trump and his administration that have been blocked by federal courts. Trump was ecstatic. 'GIANT WIN in the United States Supreme Court!' he wrote on Truth Social. 'Even the Birthright Citizenship Hoax has been, indirectly, hit hard. It had to do with the babies of slaves (same year!), not the SCAMMING of our Immigration process. Congratulations to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Solicitor General John Sauer, and the entire DOJ.' 'Thanks to this decision, we can now promptly file to proceed with numerous policies that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis, and some of the cases we're talking about would be ending birthright citizenship,' the president added at a news conference later on Friday. The day he was inaugurated, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled, 'Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,' which was intended to strip the children of non-citizen immigrants — regardless of their legal status — of the right to American citizenship if they were born in the United States. The effort is blatantly unconstitutional. The 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.' The order was challenged in multiple lawsuits, and its implementation was quickly blocked by several district court judges across multiple states. In response, the Trump administration disregarded the question of the order's constitutionality almost entirely, appealing to the Supreme Court on the grounds that the lower courts don't actually have the right to issue nationwide injunctions against an executive policy. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a liberal, called out the administration's tactics in her dissent of Friday's decision. 'The gamesmanship in this request is apparent and the government makes no attempt to hide it,' she wrote. 'Yet, shamefully, this court plays along.' 'No right is safe in the new legal regime the court creates,' Sotomayor continued. 'Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law-abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship. The majority holds that, absent cumbersome class-action litigation, courts cannot completely enjoin even such plainly unlawful policies unless doing so is necessary to afford the formal parties complete relief. That holding renders constitutional guarantees meaningful in name only for any individuals who are not parties to a lawsuit.' During oral arguments in May, lawyers for the Justice Department argued that executive orders could not be blocked by the lower courts, and should be allowed to go into effect until something like a class-action lawsuit against a given policy makes its way to the Supreme Court. 'Your argument turns our justice system into a catch me if you can kind of regime from the standpoint of the executive where everybody has to have a lawyer and file a lawsuit in order for the government to stop violating people's rights,' Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said during one oral argument exchange with U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer. The Supreme Court is controlled by conservatives, though, three of which Trump appointed in his first term. In the end, they agreed with the Justice Department. More from Rolling Stone We Made a Film About Quality Elder Care. Cutting Medicaid Would Take That Away ICE Kidnappings Are Terrifying. Trump's Bill Will Supercharge Them Senate Drops Anti-Trans Provisions From Trump's Bill Best of Rolling Stone The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence
15-05-2025
- Politics
Norman Wong's great-grandfather helped enshrine birthright citizenship. He says the struggle continues
Norman Wong is in a fight for his family's legacy. More than a century ago, his great-grandfather Wong Kim Ark -- a U.S. citizen born in San Francisco -- was refused entry into the United States under the Chinese Exclusion Act. He sued, and the Supreme Court's decision in his case became the landmark ruling that enshrined birthright citizenship. Wong, a 75-year-old retired carpenter, says he now fears he is witnessing the dismantling of his family's legacy, as President Donald Trump attempts to use an executive order to eliminate birthright citizenship for the children of some noncitizens. The Supreme Court is set to take up the issue on Thursday when justices hear arguments about whether to restrict a series of court rulings that blocked Trump's executive order eliminating birthright citizenship. "On one hand, I feel more proud than ever of being descended from Wong Kim Ark," Wong told ABC News. "But I also feel that it's a struggle that all of us need to participate in, because this is for the soul of our country." The Supreme Court's decision in the case could have sweeping implications, whether the justices decide to only approach the issue of the legality of nationwide injunctions or wade into the underlying legal arguments over birthright citizenship itself. 'Rewrite the Constitution' On his first day in office, Trump signed his executive order, entitled "Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship," to limit birthright citizenship to the children of U.S. citizens and legal residents. It was challenged immediately, and judges in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maryland, and Washington state blocked it from taking effect. "I have been on the bench for over four decades. I can't remember another case where the question presented is as clear as it is here," U.S. District Judge John Coughenour said, blocking the executive order just three days into the Trump presidency. "This is a blatantly unconstitutional order." Trump has argued that only newborns with permanent legal status are "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States and eligible for birthright citizenship. The Fourteenth Amendment states that all "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." As Trump issued an unprecedented stream of 140 executive orders during his first few months in office, his administration faced an onslaught of more than 220 legal challenges in federal courthouses across the country. Forced to defend the unilateral actions in court, the Trump administration was dealt with loss after loss, blunting the implementation of parts of his agenda during his first hundred days in office. "We've seen many Trump proposals, initiatives and orders subject to nationwide injunctions, but that's because he is issuing an unprecedented number of executive orders that seek to rewrite the Constitution and the law," explained University of Virginia school of law professor Amanda Frost. Trump and his allies have railed against what they call a "judicial coup" and argued that federal judges have overreached by issuing nationwide orders. 'Epidemic proportions' In March, the Trump administration used its appeal of multiple court orders blocking Trump's birthright citizenship executive order as a vehicle to challenge the use of nationwide injunctions, asking the Supreme Court to stay the lower courts' orders and curtail the issuance of nationwide orders. "Universal injunctions have reached epidemic proportions since the start of the current Administration," former acting solicitor general Sarah Harris argued. "This Court should declare that enough is enough before district courts' burgeoning reliance on universal injunctions becomes further entrenched." Rather than asking the Supreme Court to examine the lawfulness of Trump's executive order, the Trump administration asked the justices to consider the scope of the injunctions blocking the executive order from being implemented. They argue the order, rather than applying to anyone in the United States, should be limited to a specific federal district or only to the named plaintiffs in a lawsuit. While the Trump administration has been subject to an unprecedented number of injunctions -- more in one month than during three years of the Biden administration, according to administration officials -- Harris argued that the issue has plagued presidents from both parties. "I think the Supreme Court sees that this has just gotten totally out of hand," said a senior DOJ official who described the issue as a "bipartisan problem." Lawyers representing the plaintiffs who challenged the executive order have pushed back on the request to limit the argument to the scope of national injunctions, saying the implications of the requested relief would cause "chaos" for the thousands at risk of being born noncitizens under Trump's order. "If the Court were to grant the government's motion, chaos would ensue," they argued, adding that the nature of the issue requires a nationwide order to preserve the "uniformity of United States citizenship." Moreover, they argued that limiting the power of federal judges is inconsistent with the Constitution and curtails the federal judiciary's ability to balance the executive branch. "The government is wrong that relief benefiting nonparties violates Article III and principles of equity. If that were true, the courts could not have granted remedies for school segregation or racial gerrymandering. Nor could courts issue facial relief in response to a facially unconstitutional law," they argued. 'Hope for the best' It's unclear if any of the justices will wade into the legal question of birthright citizenship or whether they will stick to the constitutionality of nationwide injunctions, according to Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt. "The big question probably isn't a question that the Supreme Court's going to answer on Thursday," he said. "The narrower question for the court on Thursday is, if one judge decides that the government's doing something wrong, can it order the government to stop for everybody?" But for Norman Wong, who has watched from afar as the Trump administration has tried to chip away at the right his great-grandfather helped enshrine, the case's ascent to the Supreme Court is a troubling sign of how the courts may not balance potential overreaches by Trump. "If we lose this battle, it's going to get worse," he said in an interview a week ahead of the Supreme Court's argument. Wong's family has existed at a crossroads of American history. His great-grandfather, who spent his life working as a cook in San Francisco's Chinatown, battled the federal government as it tried to restrict his re-entry into the country at a time of soaring anti-Chinese sentiment. He spent five months detained on a boat off the coast of California as his case moved through the Supreme Court. Forty years later -- as the United States began to detain Japanese-Americans during World War II -- Wong's mother was sent to an internment camp. Now, the Trump administration has revived the legal arguments at the center of the Wong Kim Ark case, according to Frost, revisiting a legal push some historians have viewed as a dark moment in American history. Trump attempted to invoke the Alien Enemies Act -- a wartime authority used to deport noncitizens with little-to-no due process during wartime -- to remove alleged migrant gang members, and the government is reusing the arguments made by the former solicitor general who fought to remove Wong Kim Ark. "They're really just reviving the arguments made by Holmes Conrad, the slave-owning Virginian who fought for the Confederacy, and then after losing the Civil War, tried to win it in court," said Frost. "Many of the arguments Conrad makes about how a son of child of Chinese immigrants could not have allegiance to the United States, could not be loyal, had allegiance to the Emperor of China -- all these arguments look a lot like the kind of arguments I see in the briefs filed by the Department of Justice today under President Trump." For Wong, the case represents an ugly instance of history rearing its head, threatening not only the right enshrined in the Constitution and federal law but also his family legacy. "I want to hope for the best for my children and grandchildren," he said. "I have to believe that this stuff will come to pass, and we'll right this ship called the United States of America -- but it's going to take all of us to get on the right path."
