He Supreme Court affirmed Tuesday that the right to citizenship in place since the abolition of slavery more than 150 years ago remains, in fact, a right. If you are born on American soil, regardless of your ancestry, race, creed, or any other potentially differentiating factor, you are a U.S. citizen. It is one of the founding principles of the post-Civil War republic, and Republicans despise it.
Following the Supreme Court’s rejection of Donald Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship Through an executive order (a blatantly unconstitutional effort that should have been immediately rebuked by the court), right-wingers descended into a full-blown ethno-nationalist frenzy that ventured into outright eugenics.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen MillerHimself a descendant of European refugees from 20th century pogroms and the Holocaust, he told Fox News that the Trump administration would taking “a close look” ban all pregnant women from entering the country.
Miller, the architect of Trump’s most draconian and inhumane immigration policies, complained to Fox News that “people from all over the world, from third world countries—countries that on their own would never have invented the wheel, let alone modern technology, let alone medicine, let alone air travel—can just come to the country, have a baby, and then that baby automatically becomes a citizen?”
“The baby can be on a jury when he turns eighteen, and judge you and me,” a hysterical Miller criticized host Jesse Watters.
Leaving aside why Miller is so specifically concerned that the children of immigrants will one day be allowed to judge him, unfiltered racism was pervasive across large swaths of the right.
Derrick Evans, a rioter pardoned on January 6 who recently tried to run for Congress, tweeted that his followers should immediately contact ICE if they “see a pregnant foreigner.”
Sean Davis, co-founder of The Federalist, published a list of supposed suggestions to prevent immigrants from having citizen children in light of the court’s decision. These included: denying entry to the United States to all “foreign women,” denying entry to all pregnant women, requiring the “sterilization of all foreign visitors prior to entry,” and the “absolute dissolution of the Union.”
Davis shared other posts suggesting that Secretary of State Marco Rubio should revoke the legal immigration status of any woman under the age of 55, and that the Department of Homeland Security should prioritize the expulsion of foreign women of “childbearing age.” Rubio himself is an American born to two Cuban refugees who, at the time, were not yet American citizens.
The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh had an all-day meltdown in which suggested that pregnant Guatemalan women ran across the border (Guatemala and the United States do not share a border) 30 minutes before giving birth to “magically” grant their children US citizenship. Walsh claimed that the true “birthright” belonged to his childrenthat they deserve “to live in a country that looks like the one our ancestors founded.” Well, that’s right. In theory, Walsh’s ancestors also lived in a country that for nearly two centuries has maintained that those born in the United States are Americans… unless you mean before that, when those rights were denied to the enslaved population. He hasn’t clarified it.
While the right has framed most of its nativist fervor as a response to undocumented immigration, the reaction to the court’s decision made clear that the Republican project is also intended to strip immigrants who do things the supposed “right way” of their immigration status, and to reverse the citizenships already granted to some.
Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas), son-in-law of Indian-born right-wing conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souza, wrote that “immigration is the litmus test in our politics. Either you want to stop robbing Americans of their birthright or you believe that our nation is nothing more than the economic zone of the world.”
“More denaturalizations. More remigration,” he wrote in another social media postremember The white nationalist concept. that supports the ethnic cleansing of nations through the forced expulsion of immigrants.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) was also outraged that the 150-year-old right to citizenship is still a right, as it has been for her entire life. writing that the “State Department should IMMEDIATELY stop granting visas to pregnant applicants.”
Influencer Benny Johnson supported suggestions that Republicans should “codify into law a permanent ban on immigration from third world countries,” ban skilled worker visas like the H1-B program, and require pregnancy testing for women visiting the United States to prevent “birth tourism.”
in your own publicationJohnson claimed that dual citizenship should be illegal. He endorsed outright travel bans for “hundreds of countries,” suggested shutting down “all legal immigration,” called for “denaturalizing foreigners and anti-American scammers” and criminalizing “birth tourism” even though the practice is already heavily regulated by existing immigration policies and airlines, which literally won’t let you get on a plane if you look too pregnant.
Of the approximately 3.6 million babies born in the United States each year, about nine percent are born of foreign parents —regardless of their immigration status—the vast majority are children of long-term residents who are already in the legal immigration process. Less than half or one percent It is believed that births in the United States are related to so-called “birth tourism.” The executive order Trump issued was never just about undocumented immigration; explicitly targeted legal immigrants, residents, and long-term visa holders.
The fury currently roiling the right after Trump’s hand-picked Supreme Court refused to give him the power to unilaterally rewrite the Constitution is not based on a deep-seated concern about a (nonexistent) invasion of immigrant women bearing anchor children. It’s about being denied a tool to create the white, Christian nationalist ethnostate they’ve been publicly salivating over for years. It would be a mistake to think that they will go away quietly.
