This article originally appeared in The Dispatch on January 20, 2025.
Of the dozens of executive orders President-elect Donald Trump has promised to sign on his first day back in office, few will capture more attention and cause more debate than his decision to end birthright citizenship.
According to his campaign platform and subsequent public statements, Trump plans to direct the federal government to cease recognizing children born in the U.S. to illegal immigrant parents as automatic U.S. citizens. Members of his transition team have provided two primary justifications for this change. As a legal matter, they argue that the current practice of birthright citizenship is based on an unconstitutional interpretation of the 14th Amendment. As a policy matter, they also contend that birthright citizenship creates an incentive for illegal immigration and encourages “birth tourism,” the practice of noncitizens traveling to the U.S. for the express purpose of giving birth.
The arguments around these two contentions have been covered extensively elsewhere, and they will doubtlessly be rehashed repeatedly in the wake of Trump’s expected action. What is relatively new and insufficiently understood are the ramifications that ending birthright citizenship would have for the current moment of great-power competition, population decline, and mass polarization.
Ending birthright citizenship would collide with these contemporary considerations in three major ways: It would erode America’s current demographic advantage over rival powers, needlessly endanger the advantage we have in internal assimilation and stability, and mire us in an unnecessary and protracted distraction from building an immigration system designed to compete our with our adversaries and guarantee continued American prosperity.