The Trump administration and its supporters are preparing a major change in U.S. colonial practices by moving to restrict birthright citizenship in U.S. territories.
Since the Supreme Court reaffirmed in Trump v. Barbara that people born in the United States are citizens of the United States, as guaranteed by the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, the Trump administration has been seeking an exception for the territories. Trying to evade the Barbara decision, the White House and its allies in Congress are making new legal maneuvers that would prevent people born in the territories from being U.S. citizens.
“The Barbara case leaves the door open for Congressional action on citizenship in the American territories,” Representative Morgan Griffith (R-VA) said in a statement in July. “Just like Congress possesses the power to grant the territories Constitutional rights in statute, we have the power to take them away in statute.”
Citizenship in the Territories
Today, nearly four million people live in the five permanently inhabited territories of the United States, which are Guam, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The residents of all five territories live under U.S. jurisdiction, but they endure significant limits to their rights and freedoms, such as unequal rights and unequal representation in Congress. They have never been treated as equals, especially as it concerns citizenship.
Under current U.S. colonial practices , birthright citizenship in the territories is determined by Congress, not the constitution. Whereas people born in the states can claim citizenship under the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment , people born in the territories depend on legislation passed by Congress, which does not legislate equally across the territories.
Congress has granted birthright citizenship to four of the five territories, leaving the exception of American Samoa , whose residents are classified as U.S. nationals. Several American Samoans who live in Alaska are now being persecuted due to their separate legal status and confusion over its meaning.
Although most people born in the territories are U.S. citizens, the matter of who can claim birthright citizenship in the territories remains contested.
U.S. officials have largely operated on the principle that Congress decides whether people living in the territories are U.S. citizens. Multiple U.S. administrations have taken the position that the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not apply to the territories, despite its guarantee of citizenship to anyone born “in the United States” and “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
U.S. officials have often rooted their arguments in the Insular Cases , a notorious set of Supreme Court rulings from the early twentieth century that established a legal foundation for U.S. colonialism. Although critics have spent decades criticizing the Insular Cases for their racist arguments that rationalize a doctrine of separate and unequal for people living in the territories, multiple U.S. administrations have embraced them, relying on them to keep the territories under U.S. control.
“The Supreme Court determined that the unincorporated territories do not form part of ‘the United States’ within the meaning of the Constitution,” a think tank founded by former Vice President Mike Pence noted in a recent report.
U.S. leaders continue to rely on the Insular Cases, but critics insist that they are unconstitutional and that the Citizenship Clause covers the territories. Initially, “the long-settled understanding of the Citizenship Clause was that it applied equally to people born in the states and territories alike,” Neil Weare, co-director of Right to Democracy, explained in SCOTUSblog earlier this year.
Although the Supreme Court has largely avoided the issue, some conservative and liberal justices have displayed growing skepticism of the Insular Cases. During a case in 2022, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Sonia Sotomayor issued strong criticisms, even signaling that it is time to overrule them.
“The Insular Cases have no foundation in the Constitution and rest instead on racial stereotypes,” Gorsuch wrote . “They deserve no place in our law.” Sotomayor agreed, writing that “those cases were premised on beliefs both odious and wrong.”
When the Supreme Court had an opportunity to take up the matter in a petition involving John Fitisemanu , an American Samoan living in the United States who sought citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment and an end to the Insular Cases, it declined to consider the issue, however.
The New Threat
As U.S. colonial practices have come under scrutiny, most U.S. leaders have responded by making new commitments to empire. Not only has the Trump administration been trying to seize other countries and territories, but it has been moving to restrict the rights and freedoms of people living in the territories already under U.S. control.
After the Supreme Court reaffirmed birthright citizenship in Trump v. Barbara , Vice President JD Vance said on Fox News that “it’s a great idea” to impose new restrictions on citizenship in the territories.
“We’re certainly looking at that,” Vance said .
Not long after Vance acknowledged the administration’s interests, Representative Griffith introduced new legislation into Congress that would end birthright citizenship in the territories. Griffith called his legislation the “ End Birthright Citizenship for Territories Act .”
In a statement, Griffith said that his goal is to end what he called “birth tourism,” but his legislation would end birthright citizenship for anyone born in the territories starting on January 1, 2027.
“The bill would strip automatic U.S. citizenship from children born in Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands beginning in 2027,” Representative Stacey Plaskett (D-VI) explained in a statement. “Its sweeping language could leave children born in the U.S. territories citizens of nowhere.”
Still, the Trump administration saw an opening. On August 6, the president issued two new executive orders to limit birthright citizenship in the United States, adding new language about the territories, something he had not included in his order that was struck down by the Supreme Court.
The new language “suggests and perhaps even invites Congress to move ahead with legislation such as the ‘End Birthright Citizenship For Territories Act,’” Weare warned in a press release.
Resistance and Empire
Recent moves to end birthright citizenship in the territories do not necessarily have any traction in Congress. For instance, Representative Kimberlyn King-Hinds, a Republican from the Northern Mariana Islands, has insisted that Griffith’s legislation “will not become law.” Nevertheless, these efforts by the Trump administration are having significant consequences, perhaps some that it had not anticipated.
One is that anticolonial movements are responding with a new sense of urgency. At Right to Democracy , the organization co-founded by Weare, lawyers and activists are organizing resistance. They are issuing press releases that call attention to the Trump administration’s actions. They are also promoting an informational page that explains the issues at stake, including the colonial history of birthright citizenship in the territories.
Journalists are also providing critical coverage. Newspapers in territories that have been granted birthright citizenship by Congress, including Guam , Puerto Rico , the Northern Mariana Islands , and the U.S. Virgin Islands , are all reporting on the issue. Newspapers in American Samoa are also filing reports, publishing press releases from Right to Democracy.
At the same time, however, the Trump administration and its allies in Congress remain determined to move against birthright citizenship in the territories. Rather than acting in ways that reflect the ideals of freedom and equality that they claimed to support during their celebrations of the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of U.S. independence, they are working to strengthen the forces of empire and colonialism. Trump has even begun openly bragging about empire, shattering the longstanding norm of empire denial.
What the Trump administration and its supporters are doing, in short, is preparing for a new era of U.S. colonialism in which people in the territories live less like citizens and more like subjects, just as King George III had wanted for people living in the British colonies at the time of the American Revolution. The new colonial push threatens to impose greater hardships on the people of the territories, whose rights and freedoms have always been vulnerable to manipulation by Washington.
“The people of U.S. territories are subject to novel social and economic experiments without their say or consent,” Weare wrote in SCOTUSblog. “None of this can be squared with the principles of ‘consent of the governed’ and all ‘created equal’ on which the United States was founded 250 years ago.”
The post The New Threat to Citizenship in U.S. Territories appeared first on Foreign Policy In Focus .
The New Threat to Citizenship in U.S. Territories
Aggregated summary from an independent source. Read the original at FPIP.