New York: The US Supreme Court ruling upholding citizenship for all children born in the US protects the rights of babies born to or will be born to the nearly 300,000 Indians on H1B work visas who are trapped in an immigration quagmire.
It deals a blow to President Donald Trump, who wanted to deny citizenship rights to those whose parents are legitimately in the US on temporary visas.
The decision handed down by a majority of the justices will bring a sigh of relief to the Indians on H1B visas, who themselves may have to wait decades for citizenship, and others on temporary visas like students and visitors, whose children born in the US will now be automatically guaranteed citizenship and a lifetime right to live here.
“Today’s ruling is a profound affirmation of who belongs in America. Indians and South Asian immigrant families are among those most directly threatened by Trump’s executive order,” said Chinten Patel, the executive director of Indian American Impact, an organisation promoting political involvement by the community.
Referring to the decades-long Green Card backlog for Indians on H1B visas, he said their “children are often born here long before their parents have a clear path to permanency”.
“Today the Supreme Court looked at those families and said: ‘Your children are American. They belong here,” Patel wrote.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion, “We keep that promise” made in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment to give citizenship to all those born in the US.
“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights — to freely participate in our political community”, he said.
Indian American member of Congress Premila Jayapal welcomed the Supreme Court verdict and wrote on X, “I am an immigrant. I know what this country’s promises mean when they are kept, and I know what it costs when they are broken”.
“Our Constitution does not have asterisks. It does not have exceptions for who deserves to belong. Birthright citizenship is the law of this land, and today the Court reaffirmed that,” she said.
In one of Trump’s first actions after he became President for the second time, he issued the order to strip babies born to people living in the US on temporary visas or who are illegal migrants, trying to overturn more than a century of laws guaranteeing birthright citizenship.
Decrying the verdict as “too bad for our Country”, Trump called for legislative action by Congress to reverse it.
“We can easily make it up in Congress through legislation,” and “no long and unwieldy Constitutional Amendment is necessary,” he wrote on Truth Social.
It was not clear how legislation would withstand the clear ruling by the Supreme Court upholding the interpretation of the 14th Amendment.
The move against birthright citizenship was ostensibly meant to target the organised system of “birth tourism” — people coming to the US on tourist visas — by arranging for them to give birth here and return after claiming citizenship for the babies to establish a foothold for the family, but Trump extended it to those legitimately working here on H1B and other similar visas.
The case turned on the interpretation of the 14th Amendment, passed in 1866 and ratified two years later in the aftermath of the US Civil War, primarily to ensure that the children of freed slaves and their progeny had the right to full citizenship.
The Amendment also had the sweeping effect of offering citizenship to all, declaring, “All persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside”.
Further guaranteeing their rights, it said, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States”.
Trump and his lawyers claimed that the wording about “jurisdiction” excluded the babies of non-permanent residents or illegal migrants.
That was rejected by Roberts and five other justices, two of them conservatives like him.
Another conservative justice, Brett Kavanaugh, separately agreed to strike down Trump’s order on other legal grounds.
Trump’s order was not enforced because it was caught in a thicket of lower court cases.
(IANS)
