President Trump says he's planning to end birthright citizenship “with an executive order.” He can't, as several experts have pointed out.
Yet those critics who say the rule can change only through a constitutional amendment, such as House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and the Atlantic's Garrett Epps, also go too far. The 14th Amendment's citizenship clause, as attorneys George T. Conway III and Neal Katyal correctly note, was an effort to define previously enslaved African Americans as U.S. citizens. But when they acknowledge that “it is Congress, not the president, who is in the driver's seat when it comes to immigration,” they fail to note that it can steer birthright citizenship policies in a new direction.
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