The Next Immigration Battle: Birthright Citizenship and the Hidden Consequences of Revoking It
This article was written by guest author Alexandria M. Hohman. Ms. Hohman was the Project Manager for ”Promoting Civility” CLE Series at Robert’s Fund, earned her B.A. in Political Science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 2006 and her J.D. from Seattle University in 2011. Roughly, four million individuals become Americans every year[1] without even trying and now influential politicians seek to remove this. The benefit in controversy is birthright citizenship, which is found in an obscure provision in the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause. The Citizenship Clause codifies the common law principle of jus soli[2]—conferring citizenship to a person who is born physically in the United States.[3] Today, the calls for revocation of birthright citizenship would only allow citizenship through jus sanguinis or lineage.[4] As states struggle to address immigration, revocation…