The Texan Explains: Birthright citizenship battle

Welcome to The Texan Explains, a weekly news podcast featuring reporters from the news department explaining the biggest stories that are impacting students at the moment. In this episode, Associate Audio Editor Natalie Gonzalez sat down with General Projects Reporter Sahasra Tummala, as they talked about the ongoing battle of birthright citizenship.

Narrated and edited by Natalie Gonzalez. Cover art by Key Dong. Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

[Intro music]

Gonzalez: I’m your host, Natalie Gonzalez, and this is The Texan Explains. In today’s episode, we will be diving into a story about the ongoing birthright citizenship battle in courts.

Tummala: Hello, I’m Sahasra. I’m a General Projects Reporter for The Daily Texan.

Gonzalez: Okay, Sahasra, thank you so much for joining me. Let’s dive right into it. Do you think you could talk to me about your story and what exactly you wrote about?

Tummala: Yes. So I covered the battle over birthright citizenship. President Trump has passed multiple executive orders in the past year targeting birthright citizenship and who it should be granted to, and his orders have also inspired congressional legislation that target either previous court cases related to birthright citizenship or the statutory proposal that Justice Brett Kavanaugh put forth. 

Gonzalez:  And then, what exactly do you think this story means for students at UT?

Tummala: Yeah. So all these bills and executive orders target multiple populations of students who go to UT. I talked to two students who come from undocumented families, and Trump’s currently struck down executive order targeted that population, and multiple congressional bills are currently being reviewed by the judiciary, also targeted that population. That’s one of them. Another one is students whose parents are temporary visa holders, and whether or not children in their families will also be granted birthright citizenship is also contentious right now, and we also have a currently temporarily blocked executive order that might be going to the Supreme Court, depending. That’s also affecting multiple populations that could overlap with UT students, such as children who got birthright citizenship through citizenship purchase, children of foreign government employees, etc.

Gonzalez: So you talked about what this means for students, but what exactly do you think is the biggest thing students should understand about this issue?

Tummala: I think students should understand that this issue is still ongoing. We’re going to see a lot more related to birthright citizenship in the future, and this will also affect if children and their families will grant- will be granted birthright citizenship, which limits how much you can do in the United States, and it’s a very important factor in a student’s life. Even the students I spoke to are already concerned about this issue because it affects future family members and their families, people around them who are going through immigration processes or have undocumented parents, so it’s a very, like, present issue and it will affect everybody.

Gonzalez: Why is this story important for UT students, even those who aren’t directly affected by immigration policies? 

Tummala: Yeah, I think it’s important because they’re your peers, so it’s important to stay updated on what can affect who you’re going to college with, and it’s just important in terms of this is a broader, as Professor Levinson put it, this is part of a culture war per se, that is about anti-immigration and affects what the United States is approaching in terms of legislation, like how much we’re cracking down on making the United States a melting pot, per se.

Gonzalez:  What does this debate mean for students from immigration families on a personal level?

Tummala: So as I spoke with a daughter of an undocumented immigrant, she said that this debate was extremely personal to her because she feels that her citizenship is being debated, and I think it makes us- it also made another undocumented student feel — undocumented child of undocumented parents — also feel scared because it can be seen as this is the starting point, but it can also end up going towards maybe taking away citizenship is what he saw it as. That is not legislatively possible as a clarification, but it is a concern about how much this can go towards and how much it can affect people.

Gonzalez: You would say the uncertainty surrounding birthright citizenship like affects the students’ sense of security and belonging in the United States?

Tummala: Yeah, a lot of students. The two students I spoke with specifically said that it made them scared about how the government sees them. One of them said that they felt the government sees them as a burden because of this, and it also just affects their belonging at UT and in the United States in general because they feel that their citizenship is being directly debated on.

Gonzalez: What impact could these policies have on future generations of students and families?

Tummala: Yeah, so it can just completely strip future generations from U.S. citizenship, and this could lead to a number of problems in terms of what citizenship will they have? Like, will they have the citizenship of their parents’ origin countries if it was an immigration-related family? It could also have the problem of will they be able to attend UT even with in-state tuition or out-of-state tuition, like, will they be considered an international student? Just things like that, where it can completely change the trajectory of your life. Being a U.S. citizen is very important in terms of everything you can do, whether it’s financial aid, what colleges you can attend and how you can vote, etc. So it’s a very important issue.

Gonzalez: And if listeners can take away one thing from the story, what do you hope it is, or what do you think?

Tummala: Yeah, I think it’s important to be aware of birthright citizenship and legislation surrounding it because it can affect families near you, and it also just shows what the administration is prioritizing, whether or not you agree with that. And it’s important to be aware of what legislation is coming about and how it can affect the community.

Gonzalez: And then you mentioned that you had some information on the court cases. Do you think you could just elaborate on some of them and why exactly they’re important for this article?

Tummala: Yeah, so the first court case that essentially started the birthright citizenship battle was Trump v. Barbara. In that court case, the Supreme Court decided it was unconstitutional to deny birthright citizenship to children of temporary visa holders and documented immigrants because they were present in the U.S. at the time of birth, and that should be enough to guarantee them birthright citizenship. And based on this, Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested that you could revise the Immigration Nationality Act to exclude children of temporary visa holders and undocumented immigrants, and that has inspired multiple legislation from different states, such as Florida. Another Supreme Court case that is important is from 1898. That’s U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark. This case declared that certain groups are excluded from the 14th Amendment, including children of alien enemies who are hostily occupying the U.S. This refers to invasion in general, and Representative Brandon Gill of Texas has used that case to say that undocumented immigrants count for this exclusion, and he is currently proposing a bill that would deny children of undocumented immigrants birthright citizenship. Those are the two main cases that have been the target of this battle.

Gonzalez: And is there anything that I didn’t touch on that you wanted to mention in this episode?

Tummala: Yeah, I do think that one of the most interesting parts about birthright citizenship is how different people view it. During my article, I- while preparing for my article, I spoke with Chuck DeVore, or not spoke, I corresponded with him. I got an email statement from him, and he was seeing birth tourism and birthright citizenship as a whole in terms of how open it is for people to just give birth and get birthright citizenship as a threat to the U.S. in terms of it being a democracy and national security concern, and he felt it was a very serious issue that must be dealt with immediately. On the other hand, UT law professor Sanford Levinson saw the issue as more of a product of a culture war against immigration, and that was- that view was also held by the students I spoke with. So I think it’s very interesting on how people have completely different reactions to this. One sees it as an issue and a threat to the U.S. as a whole, and another person sees it as just propaganda.

[Outro music]

Gonzalez: This interview is a production of The Daily Texan Audio Department. If you like this episode, make sure to subscribe to The Daily Texan on your streaming platform of choice, and follow us on Twitter @texanaudio. To read news stories and see more from the Texan, head on over to www.thedailytexan.com. Thank you so much for listening.

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