> If you arenât here legally, your kid doesnât get citizenship either. And that extends to visitors.
The 14th Amendment says:
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
There is no proviso that says that a child born in the US can be denied citizenship even if their parents are not citizens.
The 14th Amendment was necessary because former slavers wanted to deny the same freedoms to blacks that nativists want to deny to immigrants.
The 1857 Supreme Court ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford declared that blacks were not and could not become citizens of the United States.
The 13th Amendment, while it abolished slavery, did not define citizenship or protect the basic civil rights of the formerly enslaved.
Immediately after the 13th Amendment was ratified, many Southern states enacted Black Codes. These laws severely restricted the right of blacks to own property, testify in court, or move freely.
The 14th Amendment was intended to provide a federal guarantee of due process and equal protection that states could not legally bypass.
Many legislators also worried that a future Congress could simply repeal the law.
Elevating these protections to the Constitution made them significantly harder to dismantle.