The land, infrastructure, institutions, and accumulated wealth of the United States constitute real property and wealth, built, defended, and held in perpetuity as an endowment by and for generations of American citizens and those who entered lawfully. These assets exist because citizens labored, sacrificed, paid taxes, and, when necessary, gave their lives in defense of the nation.
It is therefore preposterous to assert that the fertilization of an egg by two foreign nationals abroad, followed by a deliberate legal or illegal border crossing, creates a constitutional birthright to our inheritance. The word inheritance requires the person who bequeathed it to have owned it. A geographic point on a map, North, South, East, or West of a border, has no volition and cannot bequeath anything. Virtually no other nation allows such a preposterous practice.
Noncitizens and even temporary legal residents do not own U.S. citizenship. Therefore, they may not bequeath it. The 14th Amendment was ratified to secure citizenship for the children of persons fully subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S., most notably the newly freed slaves after the Civil War. It did not suggest persons carrying foreign or no passport might conceive and endow a child with U.S. citizenship.
Granting birthright citizenship under these circumstances is not compassion. It is the theft of a hard-earned national inheritance into a universal claim available to anyone willing to violate our sovereignty. This practice dilutes the birthright of the descendants of legendary Americans: the Asian immigrants who laid the railroads under brutal conditions, the descendants of Africans enslaved and sold into the trans-Atlantic trade by Arab traders, the pioneers who settled the continent, the poor escaping imperial Europe, the Irish driven by famine, and the millions of other immigrants who embraced the existing legal process and duties of citizenship.
The total balance sheet of the government is the province of the citizens. Americans are not subjects of the government. The government is not our leader. It is our agent of executive action. We, the citizens, are co-monarchs in a perpetual expression of collective sovereign will.
This is our legacy. We welcome the immigrant who comes to the most diverse country in the world, the right way, for the right reason.
READING (AND MISREADING) THE 14TH AMENDMENT
International trafficking cartels openly exploit the promise of automatic citizenship by smuggling pregnant women and families across the southern border, turning human desperation into a highly profitable industry that enriches violent organizations, endangers lives, overwhelms border communities, and strains public resources. Simultaneously, Chinese birth tourism — where affluent foreign nationals enter on temporary visas specifically to give birth on U.S. soil so their children can claim citizenship and later access education, welfare benefits, and pathways for family chain migration — demonstrates how even sophisticated state and private actors treat the policy as a strategic weapon to be exploited. This policy severs the fundamental link between lawful participation, contribution, and entitlement — the very conditions that sustain a high-trust republic and make popular sovereignty possible.
Birthright citizenship is anathema to our Constitution. The survival of the Republic depends on restoring the distinction between citizen and noncitizen, and between those who inherit or lawfully and personally accept the privilege and obligations of ownership and those who do not. This is a decision that determines our ability to defend the nation now and in the future.
Michael Breeden is a writer based in North Carolina.