The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops made an ill-considered intervention in the legal battle over birthright citizenship. After taking office in 2025, Donald Trump issued an executive order stipulating that those in residence in the United States illegally are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, and thus their children do not qualify for birthright citizenship. The executive order was challenged in court. The Supreme Court will soon rule on the issue (Trump v. Barbara). The USCCB submitted an amicus brief in the case, urging the court to rule against Trump’s executive order.
The USCCB brief cites the modern Catholic magisterium’s affirmation of the inviolable dignity of every person. In matters of immigration law and its enforcement, this principle requires “a comprehensive and humane approach to migration that ensures the God-given dignity of all persons is respected.” Undoubtedly true. The USCCB goes on to say that birthright citizenship is “consistent with Catholic teaching.” That’s true as well. Many approaches to citizenship are consistent with Catholic teaching.
Then the brief takes a bizarre turn. It insists that any restriction on birthright citizenship is “immoral and contrary to the Catholic Church’s fundamental beliefs and teachings regarding the life and dignity of human persons, the treatment of vulnerable people—particularly migrants and children—and family unity.” In other words, unlimited and unrestricted birthright citizenship is required by Catholic doctrine.
This is a strange claim. When it comes to rights of citizenship, the United States is very much the exception, not the rule. Alone among rich countries, the U.S. and Canada offer unconditional birthright citizenship. Many Asian, European, and Middle Eastern countries confer citizenship in accord with the ancient principle of jus sanguinis (“right of blood”), not jus soli (“right of soil”). Almost all Asian countries restrict the right of citizenship in this way, as do many European countries. In the United Kingdom and elsewhere, jus soli applies only to children who have at least one parent who is a legal resident or citizen. This restriction of birthright citizenship is effectively the same as that stipulated by the Trump administration’s executive order.
In effect, America’s Catholic bishops are saying that the great majority of nations have immigration laws that violate essential Catholic teaching on the dignity of all persons. It’s a shocking position to take, but it does not surprise me. The Catechism of the Catholic Church allows (as does the amicus brief) that nations have a right to control their borders. Yet, on many occasions, Pope Francis denounced efforts to stem migration as “grave sin.” The present teaching of the Catholic Church on matters of migration is akin to its teaching on war. The contemporary Catholic Church incorporates just war doctrine in its official teaching, but her position has evolved toward functional pacifism. De jure, the Catholic Church allows for border control. De facto, it supports a nearly unlimited right of migration.
The amicus brief attempts to construct an argument: Persons have a fundamental need to be part of a community; any modification or restriction of birthright citizenship deprives a newborn child of that fundamental need; ergo, such measures violate human dignity.
This argument is not credible, because the minor premise is so obviously false. When a Chinese oligarch sends his wife to Los Angeles to deliver their child, he already has a community, one that is more than happy to welcome the child. A restriction on birthright citizenship designed to stymie “birth tourism” does not deprive the child of the essential good of participation in society.
The same holds for the great majority of individuals and families who cross the border illegally. They are not stateless. Their home countries may have dysfunctional governments and languid economies, but they have intact societies. They’re not coming because they have been expelled and rendered stateless. They’d simply rather root their lives in America. In many circumstances, it’s an understandable impulse. But there is no principle of Catholic social doctrine that ascribes to every person in the world a right to residence or citizenship in the society of his choice.
The children born to people here illegally are not making a choice. But it is false to say that denying them citizenship deprives them of the possibility of full participation in society. Their families can return to their countries of origin, where, in almost all instances, the familiarity of mores, commonality of language, and presence of family networks will make it more likely that the children will feel themselves to be natural and integral members of their society than would be the case if they grew up in the United States.
The amicus brief harps on the great need for full membership in the community of one’s birth. But it is fantastical to imagine that a child born in Boston to a grad student from India who has come to the United States to complete a PhD is a vulnerable person. He is not cast into the world without home or community save the United States. On the contrary, his mother’s homeland sustains a far more ancient and thick culture than our own. Against these evident facts, the USCCB purports to believe that an absolute birthright policy is the only way to defend human dignity.
There are many reasons to support birthright citizenship. Although part of the common law, it was formally established only by the Fourteenth Amendment to ensure citizenship for freed slaves, whose ancestors had been brought to this country against their will. Birthright citizenship would come to apply to the children of the wave of immigrants who came at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth. America’s leaders recognized that birthright citizenship encouraged assimilation and promoted civic solidarity, which is to say the common good. Sod had to be broken in the Midwest. Factories required workers. Communication with the home country was difficult. Those who came would become Americans.
In the present age of mass migration, circumstances are different. Many immigrants toggle back and forth between the United States and their homelands. H-1B work visas are designed for temporary workers, as are visas for a variety of agricultural workers. The same holds for student visas. A strong argument can be made that the children of those who are in the U.S. on student visas and other programs that presume temporary residence should not have birthright citizenship. In other cases, perhaps parents should be required to meet a length-of-residence requirement. Or legal status could be required—the standard put forward by the Trump administration. These restrictions are certainly up for debate. But only someone blind to twenty-first-century realities can fail to see that an unlimited policy of birthright citizenship harms the common good and erodes civic solidarity.
Mass migration into wealthy countries throughout the West represents one of the great economic, political, and cultural disruptions of our time. We need realistic moral reflection to help us understand what we should and should not do in our efforts to regulate this unprecedented movement of peoples. Unfortunately, the USCCB amicus brief in Trump v. Barbara follows a depressing pattern. Rather than frame a cogent moral argument, too many Catholic leaders, including popes, use “human dignity” as an all-purpose warrant for their favored policies. I fear that, over time, this rhetorical posture, deployed to support positions that are self-evidently illogical, will discredit the concept of human dignity itself.
