Ramaswamy vows to end birthright citizenship for kids of illegals

After vowing to gut the H-1B visa program coveted by Indian techies, Indian American Republican presidential aspirant Vivek Ramaswamy has revived another controversial proposal to end “birthright citizenship” for children of illegal immigrants.

“Nobody believes that the kid of a Mexican diplomat in this country enjoys birthright citizenship. Not a judge or legal scholar in this country will disagree with me on that,” the son of Indian immigrants argued during the second Republican presidential debate.

“Well, if the kid of a Mexican diplomat doesn’t enjoy birthright citizenship, then neither does the kid of an illegal immigrant who broke the law to come here,” he said.

Taking a strong position on the issue, he challenged the conventional interpretation of the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment which says “all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the laws and jurisdiction thereof, are citizens.”

Hardline Republicans have long argued that the phrase “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” referred to slaves/slavery, not illegal immigrants/illegal immigration.

Because of this, Ramaswamy argued, children of undocumented immigrants born in the United States should not be granted citizenship, “because their parents broke the law” in entering the country illegally.

Ramaswamy made the comment when asked “what legal premise” he would use to expel undocumented immigrants and their American-born children from the country.

He began by noting that his opponents onstage “are on the right side of this issue” by supporting the militarization of the southern border, defunding “sanctuary cities,” and ending foreign aid to Mexico and Central America.

But he would go a “step further” by ending “birthright citizenship for the kids of illegal immigrants in this country.”

“As the father of two sons, it is hard for me to look them in the eye and say, ‘You have to follow the law,’ when our own government fails to follow its own laws,” Ramaswamy, whose parents immigrated legally, said.

Vivek Ramaswamy repeats resolve to gut H-1B visa system (September 18, 2023)

Former president Donald Trump had taken a similar line when he first ran for the White House in 2016 and had threatened to issue an executive order that would end automatic citizenship to those born in this country to noncitizens. But he never carried out his threat because there is a broad consensus in the US to hew to the 1898 Supreme Court interpretation.

Ramaswamy previously repeated his resolve to gut the current H-1B lottery system replacing it with merit based legal immigration if he wins the White House.
“It’s a lottery. Why on earth would you use a lottery when you could just use meritocratic admission instead, restore merit,” he said during a recent appearance on “Fox News Sunday.”

Asked why he wanted to gut “the very system that you used in the past to hire high skilled foreign workers for the pharma company that built much of your wealth,” Ramaswamy said the system needed drastic reform.

“There’s also lobbying based provisions where companies who sponsor somebody, that H-1B immigrant cannot work for a different company unless they actually have a whole bureaucratic process to go through,” he noted.

“We have to gut that system, restore meritocratic immigration, which is skills, not just tech skills, but all kinds of skills to match the needs we have in this country, but also civic commitments to this country,” Ramaswamy said.