It’s High Time That America Be Selective About Who Can Become an American Citizen
What do you have in common with New York City's Mayor Zohran Mamdani?
William Sullivan | April 8, 2026
The country has been on pins and needles in recent weeks, as the Supreme Court weighs a decision about birthright citizenship, which is a question that has persisted throughout every living American’s life, though it seems to me that it never should have been.
First, let’s consider the framers’ intent.
The Fourteenth Amendment is clearly directed toward ensuring that slaves born in America, whose forebears were of African origin, would be considered American citizens after the Civil War. We know this to be a fact because many American Indians were also born on American soil, though they were not considered American citizens when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified.
None of this is rocket science, and, to put it bluntly, the idea that a foreigner could smuggle herself inside these United States’ borders and birth a child to ensure that the child would be rewarded with American citizenship is about the stupidest thing anyone could have ever argued.
And yet, this stupid argument has been the supposed consensus for most living Americans’ lives.
To be clear, there would have been little “reward” for American citizenship in any years prior to the twentieth century. There was no welfare state back then. There was nothing in the way of public education, certainly no federally subsidized health care, no government assistance of any kind.
But, more importantly, what binds us as Americans is not the soil on which we are born – what binds us is the ideals to which we subscribe.
Our first and arguably greatest president explains this clearly.
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