IT’S NO secret that a lot of Filipinos want to immigrate to the United States, which is somewhat ironic since we fought so hard to kick the Americans out.
In 2016, it was estimated that there were around 271,000 “Tago Nang Tago” (hiding and hiding) Filipinos in the United States. A significant portion of these TNTs hope to remain in the United States by giving birth to their children there. These children will automatically become US citizens, because of a quirk in the American citizenship system called “Birthright Citizenship,” which grants automatic US citizenship to anyone born on US territory.
This feature of American law has given rise to birth tourism, where foreign women enter the United States, give birth then go home. The children born under this scheme become “anchor babies,” which in will turn provide their parents with easy entry into the United States. These schemes are making a lot of Americans quite angry.
Now, it’s worth mentioning that there are two types of citizenship recognized in the world today: Jus Solis or right of the soil (i.e. birthright citizenship) and jus sanguinis or right of the blood. Here, in the Philippines, our citizenship law is jus sanguinis, which means that you cannot be a Filipino if you do not have Filipino blood or if you are not an ethnic Filipino. Almost all countries in the world have similar laws with regards to citizenship.
The only exceptions are the United States and Canada, both of which adhere to jus solis. If the US ends birthright citizenship, there’s a very good chance that Prime Minister Trudeau’s successor will end Canada’s as well.
But just how did jus solis come about?
Well, it originated during the American Civil War. After the war ended, the Federal Government decided to give citizenship to the freed American blacks, partly to punish the South and partly to settle the African-American question. The argument was that because the blacks lived in US territory then they were effectively US citizens, and that’s how jus solis emerged.
There was one major caveat, though. The citizenships given to African-Americans was never intended to be given to tourists, illegal immigrants and visitors to the United States. The people who crafted and interpreted the laws were actually quite clear on this (The children of legal migrants are a different matter, though who knows what the future will bring).
Fast forward to the modern era and the law that gave citizenship to freed African-Americans was interpreted to implicitly apply to any baby born in the United States. Explicitly though? It doesn’t. And this confusion over citizenship has become a major issue in the United States.
Now, US President Donald Trump has hinted that he will soon eliminate birthright citizenship. If Trump goes through with his plan, it will go something like this: he will end birthright citizenship via an Executive Order (EO). Next, the courts will strike down the EO as unconstitutional. Trump will then bring the matter to the US Supreme Court, where birthright citizenship will have a very good chance of being ruled as unconstitutional, and Trump will force lawmakers to resolve the issue once and for all. If this happens, children of foreign nationals born in the United States will no longer be granted automatic citizenship.
Now, what does this mean for Filipinos in the United States? Legal migrants have nothing to worry about…probably. But illegal immigrants and their children? They’re going to be in big trouble. They can no longer rely on birthright laws to remain the United States.
So my advice to them is this: come home. Things are heating up in the Western World. This issue over citizenship in the US is one of the more obvious symptoms. If current political and demographic trends hold then things could get dirty. You don’t want to be there if or when it does./PN
