Birthright citizenship has been in the headlines recently due to President Donald Trump’s attempt to end the automatic right to US citizenship that nearly all babies born in the US enjoy. The current situation is “virtually every baby born on US soil is a US citizen upon birth,” Maryland District Judge Deborah Boardman has explained.
Trump wants to change that and Boardman is the second federal judge to block those moves – moves which appear to be based on the President’s entirely false understanding of international law. Trump claimed after his second inauguration that the US is “the only country in the world that does this with birthright.” His words are, however, untrue. A total of at least 33 other nations around the globe also award birthright citizenship to babies born there.
Explainer
Birthright citizenship, otherwise referred to as “jus soli” (right of land), is a legal tenet that means citizenship is granted based on being born on a country’s soil, rather than being granted according to who one’s parents are. As long as one is born within the borders of the US, for example, one is considered a US citizen (except for a handful of cases, such as the children of diplomats).
“Jus soli” is different to the principle of “jus sanguinis” (right of blood), which holds that one’s parents must be citizens first before one can become a citizen of a given country. The US also operates under “jus sanguinis” for children born to US citizens abroad.
The principle of birthright citizenship has been in place in the US for over 150 years and is enshrined in the 14th Amendment of the constitution. It means that victims of the slave trade who were transported to work in the United States have to be considered US citizens, alongside their children. It continues to mean that a child born in the US to a migrant becomes a US citizen at birth, no matter what the parents’ nationality or immigration status.
President Trump just posted about Birthright Citizenship and the true intent behind the 14th Amendment: pic.twitter.com/kd94OF6Wst
— NumbersUSA (@NumbersUSA) February 16, 2025
Would Trump be a US citizen under his own preferred rules?
Interestingly, if the birthright principle were not in place in the States, Trump himself would be ineligible to be President. He is the grandson of German immigrants on his father’s side, and his mother was born in Scotland. Neither his father nor his mother would be considered US citizens under Trump’s rules, meaning Trump would not be considered a US citizen either. The constitution states that “No Person except a natural born Citizen” can become US President.
For the same reason, Elon Musk, a close ally of Trump at the time of writing, cannot become US President, since he is a South African-Canadian immigrant to the US.
What’s more, Musk’s early immigration status has been found to be doubly illegal by reporters at the Washington Post because he was not a student when he claimed to be and he worked illegally on arrival to the States.
Which birthright citizenship countries did Trump fail to mention?
Countries aside from the US that also offer birthright citizenship are: Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Chad, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Fiji, Gambia, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Lesotho, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
And that’s not counting the many countries around the world that offer a mixture of “jus soli” and “jus sanguinis” rights. In the European Union, no country offers pure “jus soli”, but Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Portugal and the United Kingdom all allow children born there to become citizens, depending on how long the non-citizens parents in question have been residents.
