Born in the United States and Citizenship

Briefly: A person born in the United States cannot be denied citizenship: 

• The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees birthright citizenship to anyone born in the United States, regardless of their parents’ immigration or citizenship status. This is known as jus soli, which is Latin for “right of the soil”. 
• The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868 after the Civil War to overturn the Dred Scott decision, which ruled that Black people could not be citizens. 
• The Fourteenth Amendment also states that no state can make laws that abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens, or deny equal protection of the laws to anyone within its jurisdiction. 

Some anti-immigrant political groups have tried to restrict birthright citizenship. For example, in 2016, the D.C. Circuit Court ruled that American Samoans are nationals but not citizens at birth. 

Birthright Citizenship in the United States

The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees that every child born “within the jurisdiction of the United States” is a U.S. citizen, regardless of their parent’s immigration or citizenship status.

For over a century, the U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment as conferring U.S. citizenship automatically to anyone born on U.S. soil. Anti-immigrant political factions, however, have pushed to restrict birthright citizenship, attempting to deny it to children born in the United States to undocumented immigrant parents.

Most legal scholars across the political spectrum have maintained that the Fourteenth Amendment interpreted through Wong Kim Ark unequivocally extends birthright citizenship to anyone born in the United States, anti-immigrant political factions have pushed to restrict birthright citizenship—primarily, attempting to deny it to children born in the United States to undocumented immigrant parents.

In 2019, then-President Donald Trump announced to reporters that he was looking “very seriously” at ending birthright citizenship, a warning that lacked details and did not come to fruition.2 On January 20, 2025, one of the first actions President Trump took after being inaugurated was to issue an executive order purporting to deny birthright citizenship to children born of undocumented parents or whose parents are in the country on temporary status. Litigation ensued shortly after the administration issued the order, and its implementation has been blocked by the courts as of January 23, 2025.

“Birthright Citizenship in the United States,” American Immigration Council