The US president’s move on birthright citizenship came as shock to professionals awaiting green cards, the Times of India reported
US President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship for children whose parents are neither American citizens nor permanent residents “has left the Indian diaspora stunned,” the Times of India reported on Wednesday.
Set to take effect on February 20, the order stipulates that children born to foreign passport holders, including tourists, students, and work visa holders, will no longer automatically receive US citizenship. “We’re the only country in the world that does this with birth right, as you know, and it’s just absolutely ridiculous. We think we have very good grounds for the change,” Trump said in the Oval Office.
The policy is expected to have significant repercussions, particularly for over a million Indians waiting for green cards, the report noted. Forbes reported in April last year, citing US Citizenship and Immigration Services data, that more than 1.2 million Indians, including dependents, are in line for first, second, and third employment-based green card categories. The report highlighted employment-based immigration backlogs that plague the US immigration system.
US Census data analysed by Pew Research showed that the US was home to about 4.8 million Indian Americans as of 2022, of whom 34% (over 1.6 million) obtained American citizenship by virtue of birth. Around half of Indian Americans live in just four states: California (20%), Texas (12%), New Jersey (9%), and New York (7%).
The order has triggered widespread backlash in the US, with influential figures and organizations condemning the decision. Immigrant and civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, filed a lawsuit against the move on Monday.
New York-based immigration attorney Cyrus D. Mehta was quoted by the Times of India as saying that the executive order will “obviously be challenged in the court,” despite the Trump administration potentially taking the matter “all the way to the Supreme Court in the hope that the majority of conservative justices could agree with Trump’s new interpretation of the 14th Amendment.”
Hiroshi Motomura, a professor at UCLA School of Law, was quoted as saying by Vox that birthright citizenship “is such a bedrock principle of American law that of all the things on the Trump agenda, this is the one least likely to be successful.”
According to media reports, immigration advocates filed a lawsuit in New Hampshire on Monday evening, shortly after the US president signed the executive order. Additionally, 22 Democratic-led states along with the District of Columbia and the city of San Francisco filed lawsuits in Boston and Seattle, asserting Trump had violated the US Constitution. It is not the first time that Trump’s orders have been challenged in court. In 2020, a US federal judge blocked Trump’s executive order allowing state and local governments to turn away refugees hoping to resettle in their communities.
