The US Supreme Court’s decision to affirm birthright citizenship Tuesday will go down in history as one of its best.
Rejecting a decades-long effort to twist the plain meaning of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, a majority on the court found that “Children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States and are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause.”
Straightforward and correct.
That it even got this far is proof of the potency of the attempt by rightwing politicians, legal theorists and judicial activists to redefine the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” in the 14th Amendment beyond what its authors intended in order exclude children born here because of the status of their parents.
This view flies in the face of what has been a more than century-long understanding of what confers citizenship in the US. It is, as the court majority said, a “revisionist view.”
Unfortunately, it is a view that refuses to die, even with the court’s verdict; it is as persistent as it is flawed.
Sadly, Iowa’s role in this sorry episode will forever leave a stain on our state’s history.
Republican politicians here, beholden to Trump for their careers, fully backed his effort. Attorney General Brenna Bird supported the president with a brief that not only echoed the administration’s flawed legal and historical reasoning but trafficked in offensive stereotypes.
Bird falsely claimed unlawful migrants cost the American taxpayer when, in fact, the taxes they pay make them a net contributor. She callously linked innocent children to the alleged criminal activity of their parents and distorted a state study about the fiscal effects of undocumented immigrants in Iowa.
In the wake of the ruling, Ashley Hinson did much the same, falsely parroting the claim these migrants are a drain on taxpayers, rather than contributors.
They did everything but explicitly shout the foul term, “anchor babies.”
Hinson clearly believes the anti-immigrant sentiment that carried Trump to victory in 2024 will work for her Senate campaign in 2026.
Republicans have successfully ridden a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment for years. But American public opinion is changing.
We have watched, horrified, as Trump’s immigration enforcers killed two Americans on the streets of Minneapolis. They sowed chaos in Minnesota and places like Chicago and Los Angeles, and they committed all manner of offenses against American protestors.
They targeted immigrant families who were not by any stretch of the imagination the “worst of the worst.” Instead, they proved to be parents, grandparents and loyal employees, many of whom work at nursing homes, hospitals, daycares and in the food industry.
It is fitting this ruling was announced during the week of our country’s 250th birthday.
The US, of course, hasn’t always lived up to its founding ideal that all are created equal. But the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution ratified in the aftermath of the Civil War were, in the words of a prominent historian, a Second Founding.
The minority on the court and its Iowa abettors challenged this founding and were rejected by the majority.
“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights— to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land,’” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. “We keep that promise today.”
I wish Iowa’s political leaders had been on the right side of history and the Constitution in this case. They were not.
Worse, their arguments shamefully strayed from the better traditions of this state’s pursuit of equal rights and a just and moral society.
As a result, they have tarnished Iowa, and future generations will remember it.
To paraphrase what I wrote in February, the question of birthright citizenship centers on the law and on history, but it also makes an important statement about who we are today.
Are we a people who would cast out innocent children? Are we a people who would participate in the dehumanization of others just because they don’t happen to look like us or speak the same language.
Our history is full of people, of patriots, who have rejected the tactics of those who would oppress others, who would dehumanize the other.
They, and we, have not always been successful in this effort. And at times it has taken far longer than it should have to bestow the dignity owed to all people. But the history of our country is one of progress; of striving to fulfill our most worthy ideals.
There is and should be a place for every child born in the US. They are human. They belong. They are, in fact and by right, citizens.
Thankfully, the Supreme Court upheld this truth. Sadly, Iowa’s Republican leaders sought to violate it.
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Brenna Bird should not be allowed to continue to be our state attorney general-vote her out in November
What a surprise (NOT). Those currently in Iowa’s high offices have thrown themselves onto Trump’s shadow. They are not representing the Iowa that honors people’s rights and lives.