{"id":1314,"date":"2024-02-15T17:00:16","date_gmt":"2024-02-15T22:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/?page_id=1314"},"modified":"2025-05-12T11:10:05","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T15:10:05","slug":"from-dred-scott-to-anchor-babies-white-supremacy-and-the-contemporary-assault-on-birthright-citizenship","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/in-print\/volume-38-issue-1-fall-2023\/from-dred-scott-to-anchor-babies-white-supremacy-and-the-contemporary-assault-on-birthright-citizenship\/","title":{"rendered":"From Dred Scott to Anchor Babies: White Supremacy and the Contemporary Assault on Birthright Citizenship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees <span class=\"s2\">\u201c<\/span>birthright citizenship<span class=\"s2\">\u201d<\/span>: <span class=\"s2\">\u201c<\/span>All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.<span class=\"s2\">\u201d <\/span>Unrestricted birthright citizenship is under attack in America and must be defended to protect the nation\u2019s future as a pluralistic, liberal democracy. Attempts to redefine birthright citizenship have taken the form of proposed state and federal legislation, executive orders, and, most alarmingly, a drive to initiate an Article V constitutional convention. Beneath the twenty-first century packaging, these proposals mirror the message of <span class=\"s2\">Dred Scott<\/span>: <span class=\"s2\">\u201c<\/span>true<span class=\"s2\">\u201d <\/span>Americans are, by definition, white people.<\/p>\n<p>Opposition to birthright citizenship, particularly for children whose parents lack legal immigration status, is a core tenet of white supremacy, a worldview that, in the modern era, has taken on many forms, including white nationalism, white Christian nationalism, and white replacement theory. Earlier iterations of these ideologies created the <span class=\"s1\">Dred Scott <\/span>decision and the Chinese Exclusion Acts in the nineteenth century, and their influence is apparent in the modern assault on birthright citizenship. Eliminating unconditional birthright citizenship would restrict and redefine American citizenship, potentially stripping citizenship from millions of people who are descended from immigrants, most of whom are non-white. This constriction of citizenship would yield disastrous consequences, not just for the groups targeted by it, but for America as a whole.<\/p>\n<p>Continue Reading <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2024\/02\/GT-GILJ230023.pdf\">From Dred Scott to Anchor Babies: White Supremacy and the Contemporary Assault on Birthright Citizenship<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2024\/02\/GT-GILJ230023.pdf\" class=\"pdfemb-viewer\" style=\"\" data-width=\"max\" data-height=\"max\" data-toolbar=\"bottom\" data-toolbar-fixed=\"off\">GT-GILJ230023<\/a>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees \u201cbirthright citizenship\u201d: \u201cAll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8006,"featured_media":0,"parent":1312,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-1314","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8006"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1314"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1341,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1314\/revisions\/1341"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}