I’ve noticed something recently, and it’s not a phenomenon limited to the left. I see it on the right, too. A great many people seem to think that Trump’s EO was an attempt to end birthright citizenship as a whole. It was not.

I first noticed this while listening to a podcast in which people were pointing out that America was built on immigration, that they themselves got their citizenship as the children of immigrants, and so forth, and therefore they’re against Trump’s proposals on birthright citizenship. But of course, that basic process is not in dispute – for legal immigrants. Nor, as far as I know, was the idea to make Trump’s EO on this retroactive and apply to people already born here.

It’s a separate issue whether Trump had the power to do this by executive order. I don’t think he does have that power, as I’ve written before. But the issue I’m writing about in this post is what he actually was trying to do with the order, not whether an executive order would be sufficient to actually accomplish it.

Here’s Trump’s executive order; you can take a look yourself. The order relies on the 14th Amendment requirement that, in order to gain birthright citizenship, a person born here must also be “subject to the jurisdiction” of the US:

Among the categories of individuals born in the United States and not subject to the jurisdiction thereof, the privilege of United States citizenship does not automatically extend to persons born in the United States: (1) when that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth, or (2) when that person’s mother’s presence in the United States at the time of said person’s birth was lawful but temporary (such as, but not limited to, visiting the United States under the auspices of the Visa Waiver Program or visiting on a student, work, or tourist visa) and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.

In other words, the order sought exclude babies born to pregnant illegal aliens, and babies born to tourists. The next paragraph goes on to say that documents conferring citizenship should not be issued to those two classes of persons. It adds that it is not retroactive; it only applies to children born after 30 days of the order (I’ve noticed that some people had also wrongly assumed it would be retroactive).

And then it adds this:

Nothing in this order shall be construed to affect the entitlement of other individuals, including children of lawful permanent residents, to obtain documentation of their United States citizenship.

In other words, birthright citizenship would have remained intact for other classes of people.

Now, perhaps you all already knew all this. I had pretty much assumed that everyone already knew it. But then I kept hearing otherwise, some of it from people who are clearly intelligent, some of them also on the right. Was the misunderstanding a failure of the MSM to cover it properly? Or was it just a kneejerk assumption about Trump being an intolerant, marauding person who supposedly wants no immigrants? I don’t know. But I thought I’d clear it up, just in case.

What’s more, I’ve read little recently about a fact I wrote about years ago when discussing this birthright issue, which is that the US is almost alone among first-world nations in conferring it in the first place to the babies of illegal aliens and of tourists. Only Canada has a similar policy (excluding children of diplomats, however, much as we do) along with a host of third-world countries such as Cuba, Chad, and Guyana that ordinarily don’t have to fend off birth tourism anyway. I think a great many people assume that countries such as England and France have birthright citizenship much as we do, but they do not. The general rule for Europe and even for some third-world countries is that the parents must either be born there for some countries, or be legal residents for others.

When I look at recent headlines on the subject, I see a great many like this one from the BBC: “Trump loses Supreme Court battle to end birthright citizenship.” If a person reads only the headline and not the article – which people often do – that person would get the wrong idea. The body of the article itself uses the word “limit” rather than “end,” but doesn’t explain the details, and I think many or most readers would get the impression that Trump wanted to ban much more than was actually the case.

[NOTE: I’m having major WiFi connectivity problems today and had to use my cellphone to publish this. I had originally meant to add a few other articles at the end to illustrate, but have given up at the moment because it’s just too hard to do from a phone. GRRRR!]

[ADDENDUM: Here’s the part I was trying to add earlier, when my Wifi connection dropped out:

Then there’s this headline from something called the American Immigration Council. It reads: “SCOTUS Rules Trump’s Attempt to End Birthright Citizenship Is Unconstitutional.” At least, this article explains the restrictions in paragraph three, but there’s no question in my mind that for the many who don’t read that far, the impression received would be that Trump tried to ban the practice altogether.

On the other hand, this NBC News article uses the word “limit” rather than “end” in the headline. However, it doesn’t explain in the body of the article what those “limits” would be until quite a ways down – that is, paragraph ten. By that point many or even most readers probably would have given up.