Birthright citizenship challenged: Meng Zhaowen criticizes Supreme Court ruling as reckless and “opens the door to danger”
On the 27th, the Supreme Court ruled by a vote of 6 to 3 in the case of “President Donald Trump v. CASA” concerning birthright citizenship that federal district judges may no longer issue nationwide bans on federal policies in the future, and can only issue locally applicable instructions to their jurisdictions.
Although the justices did not directly rule on the legality of the Trump administration’s executive order to end birthright citizenship, the move was seen by the outside world as paving the way for limiting the “territorialism” protected by the 14th Amendment, making it possible for different states to have different citizenship standards in the future.
In response, Democratic Congresswoman Grace Meng, chairwoman of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC), said, “I am shocked that the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to promote this unconstitutional attempt to abolish birthright citizenship. This reckless ruling opens the door for states to decide who is an American citizen in the future.”
Meng Zhaowen pointed out that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution guarantees citizenship to anyone born on American soil, which was confirmed by the Supreme Court more than a hundred years ago. “However, now the Supreme Court has not ruled on the substance of this case, but has chosen to weaken the ability of judges to prevent illegal government actions, which will only bring more confusion and division.”
She said that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution can be seen as “the founding principle of Asians making their home here.” Previously, birthright citizenship has not been weakened for more than 150 years since it was included in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution in 1868.
After President Trump returned to the White House this year, he immediately signed an executive order intending to cancel the right of children born to immigrant parents in the United States to automatically obtain citizenship. He was immediately sued by several states and human rights organizations, and several federal judges successively issued a nationwide ban.
In Queens, where nearly half of the population is immigrants, Mayor Donovan Richards also criticized that “it only takes six far-right Supreme Court justices for our xenophobic president and his extreme allies to find ways to circumvent the Constitution and realize their ethnic cleansing of the country.” He called the ruling “a fascist federal regime’s trampling on the rule of law” and expressed his firm support for the rights protection actions of New York Attorney General Letitia James and immigrant rights groups. Murad Awawdeh, chairman of the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), also said in a statement that the Supreme Court’s ruling will threaten and even break up immigrant families, accelerate Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda, and threaten the “safety, dignity and future” of millions of people.
