Catholic Bishops Claim Illegal Aliens Have Natural Right To Citizenship

The Catholic bishops of the United States have asked the Supreme Court to block President Donald Trump’s “immoral” effort to end birthright citizenship.

In an amicus brief filed on February 26, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC) urged the justices to “protect God-given human dignity” by ruling unconstitutional Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship. “At its core, this case is not solely a question about citizenship status or the Fourteenth Amendment,” the bishops wrote. “It is a question of whether the law will affirm or deny the equal worth of those born within our common community—whether the law will protect the human dignity of all God’s children.”

Trump signed the executive order, titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” on his first day back in office. The order seeks to deny citizenship to children born in the United States to undocumented parents, despite birthright citizenship being guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. The Supreme Court is expected to consider the matter in the coming months. In January, the USCCB released a position paper on the issue of birthright citizenship. No European country provides for birthright citizenship. 

Filing with the USCCB is the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, which represents illegal aliens in immigration courts. 

The bishops said the order is “antithetical to the import of the Church’s teachings” because “it deprives people whose parents were not born here, or whose mother has temporary status, of the legal rights necessary to participate in the society of their birth.” They argued that “ending birthright citizenship denies the innate dignity and freedom of the person” and that the Bible “calls us to give special care to vulnerable people, including migrants and children, both of whom are affected by this Executive Order.”

The amicus brief cites legal precedent as well as various Catholic Church documents, including Gaudium et Spes, issued by the Second Vatican Council, and various USSCB pastoral letters.

“Children do nothing wrong by being born in the United States. Yet, this Executive Order renders them stateless,” the USCCB said. “Depriving an innocent child of his citizenship based upon his parents’ immigration status would be an especially outrageous punishment—one that this Court has rejected as punishment even for people who have been proven guilty.” The bishops also lamented what they described as a “climate of fear and anxiety” and the “vilification of immigrants” that is “all too common in the rhetoric concerning immigration policy.” “Ending birthright citizenship lacks historical, legal, and moral support,” the bishops concluded, urging the Court to reject the executive order and “uphold the enduring constitutional and moral commitment to equal dignity for all persons born in the United States.”

A portion of the summary of the amicus reads:

"Since the adoption and ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof' have been entitled to United States citizenship. U.S. Const. amend. XIV, §1. Not only is the principle of birthright citizenship woven into our Nation’s history and Western tradition, but it is also consistent with Catholic teaching. Birthright citizenship aligns with the Church’s teaching that humans were created as social beings and that political authority is morally bound to affirm and protect the inherent dignity of every human person in the community. In turn, birthright citizenship reflects the Catholic principle of subsidiarity by recognizing persons as members of the community from birth, thereby enabling their participation in civic life and ensuring that state power serves the human person as a social being."

The Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, which came into force following the Civil War, states: 

Section 1

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Section 3

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 4

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5

The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

The White House has not responded to a request for comment.