A US judge has temporarily blocked Donald Trump’s order to change birthright citizenship, which is enshrined in the constitution.
The BBC reports that the judge says the order, which was slated to take effect in February, was
“blatantly unconstitutional”.
Should the measure go through, hundreds of thousands of families could soon be affected. The order applies to children born to parents who are undocumented migrants or in the country temporarily.
There were 255,000 children born to undocumented mothers in the US in 2022, according to the legal challenge from the state of Washington and three others that was just heard in court in Seattle.
Over time, the number affected could multiply into the millions, according to a study done by the Migration Policy Institute and Pennsylvania State University. “Under a scenario denying U.S. citizenship to babies with one parent who is unauthorized, our analysis finds that the unauthorized population would balloon to 24 million in 2050 from the 11 million today,” the Migration Policy Institute said.
