My Young Adult Experience Gives Me Personal Knowledge About What the Issue of Birthright Citizenship May Mean to Those Children Who May Be Affected in the Future
- Mema
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
Having been a judge and a lawyer, I am a rule follower. Actually, I’ve always been
a rule follower, so it was easy to be a lawyer and a Judge, a strict constructionist
of the law.
Constitutional law to me as always been sacrosanct. Yet my own personal experience shows me that what I assumed was sacrosanct can change. My Holocaust parents’ immigration to the United States was supposed to take place in 1946 from Belsen Displaced persons camp in Germany.* We were sponsored by my Father’s uncles, who were American citizens, having
immigrated from Poland in the 1920’s to escape persecution.
However, my mother was pregnant, and under the then U.S. immigration law, myparents had to wait in Germany until I was born. My understanding was that I needed to be examined and determined that I was a healthy baby before they would be allowed to come to the United States with me. The United States did not want to be responsible if I was not a healthy baby to allow us in earlier. I was born a stateless person in Stuttgart, Germany, and spent my earliest life in Belsen displaced persons camp, previously Bergen Belsen concentration camp.
We immigrated to the United States in May 1947, when I was six months old. My parents became United States citizens as soon as they could. They told me that I became a U.S. citizen when they did, even at five and a half years old. Their understanding of U.S. law was that as a minor, I became a citizen under their naturalization papers.
I lived my childhood, teenage years, high school and college in the United States believing I was an American citizen. My parents instilled in me daily what privileges were bestowed on me by virtue of being an American. Under the belief that I was an American citizen, I went to apply for a U.S. passport when I was 19. I was planning to spend the summer in Europe.
However, when I arrived at the passport office, I was directed to the German embassy down the street from the U.S. Passport office as I was told I was not an American citizen. I was told the law that my parents relied upon was repealed January 1, 1947 and we arrived May 1947.
I insisted that I was an American and no one could tell me otherwise. Although I always believed I was a citizen, I was not an American citizen. I found out I was still a stateless person, born a stateless person to then stateless persons. I know the angst, the horror, and the fear of such newly learned knowledge. My first reaction was I was never leaving America. Voluminous tears and angst followed. Long story short, and the family knows the long story, I took the oath to be an American citizen in time to go on the trip to Europe, and got my U.S. passport.
Birthright citizenship automatically makes anyone born in the United States an American citizen, including children born to mothers in the country illegally. The right was given inscribed after the Civil War in the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
In a U.S. Supreme Court case from 1898, United States versus Wong Kim Ark, the Supreme Court held that the only children who do not automatically receive United States citizenship upon being born on United States soil were the children of diplomats, who have allegiance to another government, enemies present in the United States during hostile occupation, those born on foreign ships, and those born to members of sovereign North American tribes.
The United States is among 30 countries where birthright citizenship is applied. Most are in the Americas, Canada and Mexico among them. The executive order, which President Trump signed on the first day of President Trump‘s term directed federal offices to deny social security numbers, passports, and other citizenship documents to any child born in the U.S. who does not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or a permanent resident.
The United States Supreme Court just ruled on this issue and there is a clear possibility that there may no longer be birthright citizenship in the United States in the future.
I think that if that happens, there may be young adults like me who go to a U.S. passport office to get their U.S. passport in the belief that because they were born in the United States, they are American citizens, just to find out for the first time that birthright citizenship was repealed. Their parents may have even told them all their lives that being born in America meant they were American citizens. Yet, when they get to the passport office, they too, may find out that they are not American citizens.
When adults make decisions for their children, intending for them to be good decisions, the consequences to the child when they become an adult are beyond their and those parents’ control, and in many times beyond their knowledge of the law, changes in the law, and its consequences. It is the innocent children that always suffer. If birthright citizenship becomes a thing of the past, most Americans will not pay attention, and most immigrants will not even know it. Most people don’t know the law.
My personal experience gave me that early knowledge and the understanding that the majority of us have no control over the law that impacts us. Will there be laws that even allow those who were born in the United States after the repeal of birthright citizenship apply to become an American citizen? What becomes their status? Has this issue been contemplated?
I hope this blog post alerts all readers to the need to check current laws that apply to them and share this information. Laws can change without our knowledge and understanding on issues that matter the most.
Proud to be an American,
Mema
*See my parents’ Holocaust Stories:
