More than a month after the US Supreme Court struck down his original attempt to end birthright citizenship, President Donald Trump has renewed the campaign – signing two narrower executive orders on Thursday (August 6) aimed at restricting automatic citizenship for specific categories of children born in the US. Trump’s first attempt, signed on his first day in office on January 20, 2025, sought to deny citizenship to any child born on American soil unless at least one parent was a lawful citizen or permanent resident.
Federal judges blocked it before it could take effect, and on June 30, 2026, the Supreme Court struck it down in Trump v. Barbara, upholding the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship.The new orders take a narrower approach. The first excludes specific categories from automatic citizenship – including children of foreign diplomats, alleged “alien enemies” of the US, and members of designated foreign terrorist organisations. The second targets so-called “birth tourism”, the practice of foreign nationals travelling to the US specifically to give birth so their child receives American citizenship, which the administration has repeatedly called a major abuse of the immigration system.
It directs federal agencies to tighten enforcement against businesses that facilitate the practice and scrutinise visa applicants suspected of planning US births. The scale of what’s at stake is considerable. A 2023 Pew analysis found that nine per cent of roughly 320,000 US births were to mothers who were unauthorised immigrants or temporary legal residents. Pew also estimates at least 4.6 million children currently live with at least one unauthorised immigrant parent, and 1.4 million US-born adults do too – meaning even a partial rollback of birthright citizenship could leave millions facing uncertain immigration status.The US system rests on the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, whose Citizenship clause grants citizenship to anyone born in the US and “subject to its jurisdiction”.
The Trump administration argues that the phrase gives it room to exclude children of those unlawfully or temporarily present in the country – an interpretation the Supreme Court has already rejected once this year. Birthright citizenship isn’t unique to the US. Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay all grant automatic citizenship to children born on their soil, while European countries including France, Germany, Ireland, Portugal and Spain attach residence or parentage conditions instead. The US adopted its version to encourage settlement and integrate immigrant populations at one time.
Impact on South Asia
The narrower scope of Thursday’s orders offers some reassurance to skilled foreign workers from South Asia – including large populations from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal – who form the backbone of the US H-1B workforce, particularly in technology. Because June’s ruling in Trump v. Barbara already secured citizenship for children of parents on temporary work and student visas, including H-1B, H-4 and F-1 holders, and because the new orders’ excluded categories are limited to diplomats, and members of designated terrorist organisations, H-1B professionals and their US-born children continue receiving birth certificates and citizenship rights largely unaffected by this latest move.
The greater exposure lies with the birth-tourism order, which will fall more heavily on the broader visitor-visa pipeline than on working professionals. India is frequently cited, alongside China, as a leading country of origin for birth tourism to the US, and many South Asian families invite parents or relatives on B-1/B-2 visitor visas around the time of a child’s birth. Under the tightened rules, pregnant travellers or applicants suspected of planning to give birth in the US are likely to face more detailed visa scrutiny – a shift that could complicate a common practice among Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan and Nepali families living and working in the US on long-term visas.
The White House defended the orders as protecting “the meaning and value of American citizenship”, saying in an official fact sheet that the administration is guarding against citizenship claims by “malign foreign actors” and upholding the immigration system’s integrity by screening out birth tourists.Democrats reacted swiftly.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that Trump’s “continued crusade to end birthright citizenship is blatantly illegal” and vowed to challenge the orders in court, adding that the president had “set himself up for yet another loss”.
Senator Alex Padilla wrote on X that Trump “doesn't understand the Constitution”, while California Governor Gavin Newsom posted the text of the Citizenship clause itself in response.The political stakes extend well beyond immigration policy.
The new executive orders are part of the larger anti-immigration campaign by Trump, and subvert the judiciary which has largely stood firm in defence of the country’s Constitutional doctrines. Birthright citizenship, under Trump, has become a proxy fight over national identity itself.