President Trump signed a number of Executive Orders related to Immigration on his first day in office. One of the most profound is the Executive Order entitled "Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship". This Order reverses a longstanding law established in 1857 known as "Birthright Citizenship."  Birthright Citizenship means that any person born in the United States will automatically attain United States citizenship by virtue of their birth on United States soil, no matter the immigration status of the parents. Under this new Executive Order, any child born to a mother who is unlawfully present OR on a temporary visa is now excluded from Birthright Citizenship if the father is also not a United States citizen or permanent resident at the time of the baby's birth.

The Executive Order states as follows:

Section 1.  Purpose.  The privilege of United States citizenship is a priceless and profound gift.  The Fourteenth Amendment states:  “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.”  That provision rightly repudiated the Supreme Court of the United States’s shameful decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857), which misinterpreted the Constitution as permanently excluding people of African descent from eligibility for United States citizenship solely based on their race. 

But the Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States.  The Fourteenth Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”  Consistent with this understanding, the Congress has further specified through legislation that “a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” is a national and citizen of the United States at birth, 8 U.S.C. 1401, generally mirroring the Fourteenth Amendment’s text.  

Among the categories of individuals born in the United States and not subject to the jurisdiction thereof, the privilege of United States citizenship does not automatically extend to persons born in the United States:  (1) when that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth, or (2) when that person’s mother’s presence in the United States at the time of said person’s birth was lawful but temporary (such as, but not limited to, visiting the United States under the auspices of the Visa Waiver Program or visiting on a student, work, or tourist visa) and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.