Supreme Court snubs Trump on immigration, but he could use new tools

The US Supreme Court’s decision to uphold birthright citizenship comes as a blow to President Donald Trump ’s crusade against immigration and a reprieve for millions of immigrants, including the Indian diaspora. The executive order, signed on his first day back in office last year, sought to deny citizenship to children born in the US if neither parent was a US citizen or lawful permanent resident, including those whose parents were legally in the country on temporary visas. But the text of the Constitution — the Fourteenth Amendment — is unambiguous, reinforced by well over a century of legal precedent: People born in the US are citizens. Few expected the court to endorse the Trump administration’s argument that children born to parents who entered illegally were not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the US and not entitled to citizenship. But even in defeat, Trump has succeeded in politicising birthright citizenship, an issue that was once the subject of broad bipartisan consensus in America. The US is home to an estimated 5.4 million people of Indian origin — the largest Indian diaspora — accounting for roughly 1.6 per cent of the US population. After Mexicans, Indians constitute the second-largest immigrant group. They are not only the largest recipients of H-1B visas but also the nationality most affected by employment-based green card backlogs because of caps that are country-specific. Many professionals spend years, even decades, waiting for a permanent status, raising families while on temporary visas. Without birthright citizenship, children born during that period would enter the same uncertain immigration pipeline as their parents. Trump’s order was also detrimental to America’s own interests. Foreign-born workers make up nearly one-fifth of the US labour force, and a sharp reduction would carry significant economic costs. Trump has threatened to use Congress to abolish birthright citizenship in response to the court verdict. Even if the constitutional guarantee survives, it is only one setback for an administration that has already enacted hundreds of immigration restrictions, contributing to net migration to the US turning negative for the first time in half a century. The Supreme Court’s judgment may have preserved one of America’s oldest constitutional promises, but immigrants remain vulnerable and Trump’s crackdown on immigration is far from over.