On Tuesday, California AG, Rob Bonta, along with 18 other state attorneys general challenged in court an executive order signed by President Trump ending birthright citizenship. Bonta asserted that birthright citizenship, a situation in which a child born in this country to illegally present foreigners automatically becomes a U.S. citizen, is a “longstanding foundational right” and that Trump’s action sets “a terrifying tone” for the rest of his term. Should Trump’s order be allowed to stand, Bonta said, it would deny citizenship to more than 20,000 babies a year in California alone, cutting them off from access to federal benefits and programs. The order could also put at risk states’ access to federal funding from programs like Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. “Birthright citizenship is foundational to our nation’s history, to California’s history, to our very identity,” Bonta said.

I find it ironic that Bonta cares so much about birthright citizenship to 20,000 babies a year but is not the least concerned with denying the right to birth to 179,660 babies a year in California. I would assert that the right to life is a “longstanding foundational right” that trumps (no pun intended) the claim of birthright citizenship. Moreover, no matter how painful the loss of state access to federal funding may seem to Bonta and others in the bloated California bureaucracy, it is hardly worth losing sleep over for the rest of us.

Bonta never addresses what value birthright citizenship might bestow upon an infant while his parents remain illegal aliens. The parents are not going to leave him behind if they are deported. The parents might see some advantage in using their infant as a pawn (“anchor baby”) in a contest with the U.S. government to remain in the country but that is it.

The cases of which I am personally aware involve citizens of countries in the Middle East and South America flying to the USA to give birth.  They return to their country a few weeks after giving birth and continue their lives satisfied that they have conferred upon their offspring the advantage of U.S. citizenship, one that their children are free to exercise in the future if they choose.

I don’t think that if either of the aforementioned “birthright citizenship” uses were disallowed that it would undermine the foundation of our nation’s history or identity. Bonta is acting like a drama queen on this one.

The most laughable element of Bonta’s argument is his contention that the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted to enable what we see today.  I contend that if the framers were alive today, they would be scratching their heads in bewilderment about our present predicament. They might even call up the Union army thinking that Mexico was trying to reconquer its lost territories.

Image: Critical Moss, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr, unaltered.