In a matter of days, we will learn the Supreme Court’s decision regarding whether to uphold the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause. That clause, which was ratified with the rest of the amendment in 1868, 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.”
For 158 years, courts have found that this clause codifies “birthright citizenship.” Still, President Trump issued Executive Order 14160 on the first day of his second term — an order that was designed to scuttle that right. Immediately, civil rights organizations, immigrant rights groups and attorneys general of various states issued legal challenges. The president fully expected the issue to ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court — which has given him virtually unprecedented victories since he returned to office.
All three branches of our government have interpreted the Citizenship Clause as guaranteeing a broad conferral of U.S. citizenship. For example, in 1898 the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Wong Kim Ark that the 14th Amendment grants citizenship to nearly everyone who is born in the United States. Crucially, this includes children of parents who are not U.S. citizens. There are a few exceptions (e.g., it does not apply to U.S.-born children of foreign ambassadors).
For context, in 1857 SCOTUS decided in Dred Scott v. Sandford that Black people — whether enslaved or free — were not American citizens. The Citizenship Clause has always been seen as overturning that ruling. However, Trump seeks to deny citizenship to any U.S.-born baby whose mother is in the country “unlawfully” or “lawful[ly] but temporar[ily]” and whose father is “not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident.”
Today, millions of Mr. Trump’s voters argue that, given its historical context, the 14th Amendment should only apply to U.S.-born Black people, as opposed to children of immigrants.
It may surprise some that abolitionist, statesman and publisher Frederick Douglass — who was born into slavery — believed that the 14th Amendment should apply to children of immigrants.
Beginning in 1869 — one year after the amendment was ratified — Douglass began delivering a speech titled “Our Composite Nationality.” In the speech, he gives a full-throated defense of immigration, with a particular focus on Chinese nationals who were entering the U.S. to address our insatiable need for underpaid laborers. Douglass’ stance is especially poignant given that the social status and even physical safety of Black Americans was very tenuous.
Douglass, who was ever prescient, discussed America’s then-current, as well as future, diversity.
“We are a country of all extremes, ends, and opposites — the most conspicuous example of composite nationality in the world. Our people defy all the ethnological and logical classifications. In races, we range all the way from black to white, with intermediate shades which, as in the apocalyptic vision, no man can name or number. In regard to creeds and faiths, the condition is no better and no worse. Differences both as to race and to religion are evidently more likely to increase than to diminish,” Douglass told audiences.
Douglass also addressed an issue that is relevant today:
“I have great respect for the blue-eyed and light-haired races of America. They are a mighty people. In any struggle for the good things of this world, they need have no fear; they have no need to doubt that they will get their full share. But I reject the arrogant and scornful theory by which they would limit migratory rights, or any other essential human rights, to themselves and which would make them the owners of this great continent to the exclusion of all other races of men,” said Douglass.
Notably, this speech comes 17 years after Douglass first delivered his most famous speech, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” In that unmatched oration, he exposed the abject hypocrisy of white Americans celebrating freedom while concurrently enslaving more than three million Black Americans.
By contrast, “Our Composite Nationality” sought to help white Americans understand the advantages of forging a cohesive nation from a society divided by race, ethnicity and origin. Some 157 years later, that is still the dilemma, the choice and the opportunity for America.
Larry Smith is a columnist for the Indianapolis Recorder, which originally published this commentary