Trump Set On Abolishing Birthright Citizenship
December 9, 2024
Trump has started to push false narratives around some of the country’s long-standing laws.
Just weeks before he is sworn in as the 47th President of the United States, Donald Trump says he will fight to end birthright citizenship as he falsely claims America is “the only country that has it,” NBC News reports.
During an interview with Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker, Trump highlighted some incoming policies he and his team are working on, with one being abolishing the 14th Amendment right to birthright citizenship, stripping away rights from those born in the country to undocumented parents.
When Welker asked the indicted businessman about his plans to get around the amendment, he said that he is willing to go back to “the people.”
“We’re the only country that has it, you know?” he said. “You know, if somebody sets a foot, one foot, you don’t need two on our land, ‘congratulations, you are now a citizen of the United States of America. Yes, we’re going to end that cause it’s ridiculous.”
In his first on-camera interview since winning the 2024 presidential election, Trump has started to push false narratives around some of the country’s long-standing laws. While claiming the U.S. is the only country with birthright citizenship, according to Politico, more than 30 countries, including Brazil and Canada, offer the same rights.
Trump plans to start with deporting all undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes; however, no details have been laid out on which crimes will be included.
“I think you have to do it. It’s a very tough thing to do, but you have to have, you know, you have rules, regulations, laws,” Trump said. “They came in illegally. You know, the people that have been treated very unfairly are the people that have been online for 10 years to come into the country.”
Not all undocumented immigrants will be facing deportation. Trump said he is willing to “work something out” with Democratic lawmakers to make sure Dreamers, undocumented immigrants who entered the U.S. as children, wouldn’t be affected by the projected change “because these are people that have been brought here at a very young age,” Trump said.
“And many of these are middle-aged people now. They don’t even speak the language of their country. And yes, we’re going to do something about the Dreamers.”
A number of Republican lawmakers are prepared—and excited—about their leader’s deportation plans. Senator-elect Bernie Moreno, born in Colombia and Ohio’s first Latino legislator, praised Trump’s promise to tackle immigration on day one of his second-term.
“We’ve got to fix immigration. This election was ultimately about two issues at the end of the day: open borders and high prices,” Moreno said. “That was the entire election, and we got to fix the immigration system. It’s the easiest thing to fix intellectually. It’s the hardest thing to fix emotionally, and I hope to play a role in making that happen.”
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