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If you’re waking up with questions about the new USCIS Policy Alert, like I am, you can start with the text of the alert here, courtesy of @CNN. cnn.com/2019/08/28/pol…
It’s complicated; be careful about from whom you take advice about its meaning, implications, and effects. I’m following immigration law experts and practitioners @leegelernt and @prof_kari_hong. Love to hear who you’re following for expertise (rather than superficial punditry.)
A point of information. Who can claim Birthright Citizenship in the US is a matter of fact *and* of law. For the purposes of citizenship, the US is a physical territory and also a legal fiction. A child can be born in, for example, Germany but be deemed born in the US, by law.
Congress & federal agencies (and occasionally courts) have long defined what it means to be born in the US. Children born in US “territories” & those born to US parents in foreign countries, for example, can be deemed by lawmakers as born in the US & hence Citizens by Birthright.
Going forward, those children who enjoy Birthright Citizenship by virtue of law (an act of Congress or agency rule,) rather than being literally born in the US, are vulnerable to the politics and policy that may change those rules.
Listen carefully to understand what these changes mean in the lives of families living and working outside the US. And offer comfort to those who have been newly drawn into this reign of terror in which citizenship has become a weapon rather than a balm.
(Punditry alert.) This whittling away at birthright at the edges puts all citizens in precarious circumstances. It may tempt us toward the view that some are truer/more deserving citizens than are others. We may become drawn to the view that citizenship is a temporary status.
Resist.
