Trump Has Absurd Take On Birthright Citizenship | EUROtoday

In a freewheeling interview with NBC News SundayPresident-elect Donald Trump provided a head-scratching clarification for his plan to wage an assault on birthright citizenship.

“Did you know, if somebody sets a foot — just a foot, one foot, you don’t need two — on our land, congratulations, you are now a citizen of the United States of America,” Trump mentioned, when discussing birthright citizenship.

“Yes, we’re going to end that, because it’s ridiculous,” he added.

Trump appeared to explain a hypothetical state of affairs by which a girl would give delivery to an toddler who — both able to strolling at delivery or helped alongside by somebody desirous to win a guess — would set one foot on American soil and the opposite in both Mexico or Canada.

It can be potential Trump was imagining an toddler hopping or standing on one leg. Neither state of affairs is believable.

Trump additionally repeatedly requested whether or not the interviewer, Kristen Welker of “Meet the Press,” knew that the United States was the one nation that conferred citizenship by birthright.

“We’re the only country that has it, you know,” Trump mentioned. “You know we’re the only country that has it.”

Birthright citizenship is usually acknowledged within the Americas, together with in Canada and Mexico. Also recognized by its Latin authorized time period as “jus soli,” it’s the idea of conferring citizenship by delivery in a given nation. Most nations as an alternative acknowledge “jus sanguinis,” which as an alternative confers citizenship primarily based on the nationality of an individual’s dad and mom.

Welker didn’t problem Trump’s totally mistaken description of how birthright citizenship works or that the United States just isn’t alone in recognizing it. But she requested whether or not Trump meant to enact his proposed change by government motion.

“Well, if we can, through executive action,” Trump mentioned. “I was going to do it through executive action, but then we had to fix COVID first, to be honest with you.”

Birthright citizenship is protected by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. The president can not use government motion to overturn a constitutional modification, although authorized consultants count on the Trump administration to problem the long-settled authorized interpretation by the courts.

Trump has spent important time in southern Florida, which is house to a big Cuban-American neighborhood.

He doubtless got here up with this bizarre description of birthright citizenship by free-associating the difficulty with the now-defunct coverage of permitting Cuban migrants to remain inside the United States and pursue citizenship upon touching American soil. The coverage was referred to as “wet-foot, dry-foot.”

During this 12 months’s presidential marketing campaign, Trump repeatedly described immigrants as coming from jails and psychological establishments. He was doubtless resurrecting assertions he heard through the period of the Mariel boatlift 4 a long time in the past.