Born this way

Of the flurry of executive orders that President Donald Trump signed on his first day in office, there is one that I find most troubling: the effort to cancel birthright citizenship. The understanding of the 14th Amendment’s grant of citizenship to “all persons born and naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” has been stable for more than a century and a quarter.

The key test came in 1898, when a Chinese-American (though back then the term would not have existed) named Wong Kim Ark was barred from re-entering the United States after a visit to China. Ark had been born in San Francisco to parents who could not become citizens because of the Chinese Exclusion Act. The U.S., under President William McKinley, argued that meant Ark was not eligible for citizenship himself. The Supreme Court ruled that, whatever the status of his parents, Ark was a citizen of the United States.