Source: The Hill
by Steven Lubet
“The ratifiers of the 14th Amendment could not have contemplated excluding the children of unlawful entrants, because the concept did not yet exist in 1868. There were no visas or standardized passports, or other official travel documents, and thus no defined legal categories of immigrants. The first general entry restriction — a blatantly racist law that applied only to Asians — was not enacted until 1882. There were, however, many temporary residents, the other group subject to Trump’s executive order. Naturally, some of them produced children. As Professor Amanda Frost and her student coauthor, Emily Eason, brilliantly determined, at least a dozen members of Congress in the years 1865 to 1871 may have been the American-born children of temporary residents, whose citizenship would therefore have been ‘suspect under President Trump’s interpretation’ of the 14th Amendment. And yet, there were no challenges to their qualifications to sit in Congress, for which citizenship is a constitutional requirement.” (01/05/26)
https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/supreme-court/5670043-birthright-citizenship-trump-challenge/