Justin Fox, Columnist

Dismantling a Fake Argument Against Birthright Citizenship

In 1866, the drafters of the 14th Amendment clearly intended to grant it. Don’t believe anyone who claims that they didn’t.

July 24, 2018 at 5:00 PM UTC

By Justin Fox

Justin Fox is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business, economics and other topics involving charts. A former editorial director of the Harvard Business Review, he is author of “The Myth of the Rational Market.”

Draft of the 14th Amendment.
Source: Hulton Archive via Getty Images

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

I think it would be possible to construct a reasonable argument for getting rid of birthright citizenship. After all, times have changed since 1868, when the ratification of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution guaranteed that

Travel to the U.S. is much easier now than it was in 1868, the U.S. now has laws restricting immigration — which it didn’t yet then — and one could argue that birthright citizenship has become a “magnet” for those looking to circumvent those laws, as former Donald Trump administration official Michael Anton did in a Washington Post op-ed last week. Anton continued: