2026年6月21日 / 美国东部时间上午9:17 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
出生公民权在宪法第十四修正案的第一句话中明确规定：“凡在合众国出生或归化合众国并受其管辖者，均为合众国及所居住之州的公民。”
弗吉尼亚大学法学教授阿曼达·弗罗斯特表示，这意味着每一位在美国出生的人，无论其父母的身份或血统如何，“极少数例外情况除外，即外交官子女和入侵占领军的子女。其他所有人出生时自动成为美国公民。”
弗罗斯特称，这项公民权条款的宪法议题不存在任何歧义。但皮尤研究中心的一项民调显示，美国民众在“是否应给予非法移民子女出生公民权”的问题上意见几乎持平——50%的人表示支持，49%的人表示反对。
灯塔出版社
2025年1月，特朗普总统发布一项行政命令，称“第十四修正案从未被解释为普遍赋予所有在美国境内出生的人公民权”。该命令将剥夺绝大多数非法居留或临时居留父母所生子女的公民身份，每年约有25万名儿童会受到影响。
该行政命令被下级法院叫停，目前已提交至最高法院。
最高法院近170年前首次就公民权问题发表意见，当时的裁决普遍被认为是其最耻辱的判决：臭名昭著的“德雷德·斯科特诉桑福德案”。弗罗斯特说：“这是1857年的判决，最高法院在该案中裁定，无论被奴役还是自由的黑人，都永远不能成为美国公民。”“撰写该判决的首席大法官坦尼曾说：‘如果你不喜欢，可以修改宪法。’”
而这正是1868年内战结束后发生的事，第十四修正案获得通过。弗罗斯特说：“重建时期的国会希望明确，所有400万 formerly 被奴役的人都是美国公民。他们还意识到，越来越多的移民来到美国海岸，因此承认移民的子女也将成为公民。”
美国国家档案馆/临时档案档案馆/盖蒂图片社
但30年后，“黄金德案”被提交至最高法院。黄金德在旧金山出生，父母为华人，1895年访华后被拒绝重新入境美国。他奋起抗争，坚持自己作为美国公民的权利。
“对我而言，黄金德代表了普通民众，”黄金德的后代诺曼·金德说，“他不富裕，不出名，也没有任何超凡才能。他所拥有的只是挺身而出、维护自己作为美国人权利的意愿。”
在当时猖獗的反华偏见氛围中，法院作出了有利于黄金德的裁决，这似乎一劳永逸地解决了出生公民权问题。
但一直以来都有反对者。
“现实情况是，该条款非常简洁，有许多问题并未直接涉及，”政治学家罗杰斯·史密斯说，“如今最受关注的问题是非法外籍人士子女的身份，而在第十四修正案起草和批准之时，支持或反对该条款的人都未曾讨论过这个问题。”
特朗普政府援引了史密斯的学术研究来支撑其论点。史密斯曾于1985年在耶鲁大学任教期间，与人合著了一本关于出生公民权的著作，他认为国会有权限制非法居留父母所生子女的公民身份。“我认为，半个多世纪以来，国会——以及各种事业的倡导者——试图将这些决策推给法院，这本身就是一个错误。”史密斯说，“国会在美国宪法体系中本应发挥的作用，远未得到充分发挥。”
他认为，与其将问题推给法院解决，不如由民选代表来决定。
但尽管史密斯的研究被那些想要限制出生公民权的人引用，史密斯本人却反对特朗普政府的做法。他表示，自己的学术研究被反移民人士援引让他感到痛心：“这确实成了那些极端反移民、常以贬低性刻板印象描述移民的人所使用的论据。”
全球实行普遍出生公民权的国家大多位于美洲。但世界上大多数国家一直在逐步取消这项制度。
2005年1月，爱尔兰——最后一个保障出生公民权的欧洲国家——在79%的国民投票支持限制该权利后，废除了出生公民权制度。
玛丽安·索巴约（近期登上《纽约时报》）在都柏林出生，父母为尼日利亚移民。她是五个兄弟姐妹中最小的一个，出生仅一个月后，爱尔兰就废除了自动出生公民权政策。
“我想去迪士尼乐园，我们总问妈妈：‘我们什么时候去迪士尼乐园？什么时候去？’她总说‘快了’，”索巴约在接受《周日早间新闻》采访时说，“但后来我慢慢琢磨，到底是什么阻碍了我们？我才意识到：‘哦，我姐姐是公民，另一个姐姐也是，我妈妈现在也是公民了。’但我才是那个没有公民身份的人，正是因为我，我们没法去旅行。”
家庭照片
玛丽安·索巴约是家中三个孩子里最小的一个，在爱尔兰修改出生公民权相关法律后出生，因此她的姐姐们都是爱尔兰公民，而她不是。
没有护照的索巴约沦为无国籍人士，尽管爱尔兰是她唯一熟悉的国家。她甚至学会了爱尔兰语。“爱尔兰州的每个孩子都必须学爱尔兰语，”她说，“你从7岁到18岁左右都在学，完全沉浸其中，但后来我会想：‘我在一个我甚至感觉不到有根的国家学一门语言，因为我得费尽周折才能证明自己属于这里。’”
整个过程十分复杂，但2023年8月，18岁的索巴约——如今已是一名社工——终于成为了爱尔兰公民。“那一刻感觉我的人生终于开始了，”她说，“我有点疯狂地预订假期。我终于觉得世界尽在掌握，我们终于可以全家一起度假了。我们终于可以不用再时刻担惊受怕地生活了。”
弗罗斯特说：“移民是一个复杂的全球性问题，没有简单的答案。一个绝对不可行的方案就是废除美国的出生公民权制度。”
弗罗斯特认为，美国之所以与众不同，部分原因在于其长期以来对移民的包容：“看看《财富》500强企业，其中约一半由移民或移民子女执掌。移民子女在美国表现极其出色，因为他们能快速融入这个国家。我们在这方面比欧洲做得更好。”
她表示，尽管她不同意特朗普总统的行政命令，但她也认为，围绕出生公民权展开的讨论能带来一些积极意义：“如果说此事能带来什么好处，那就是我们得以讨论出生公民权的宗旨——它在美国旨在确保平等，符合美国建国时摒弃世袭君主制的价值观。如果我们生来平等，那就不应终结这项契合国家建国价值观的宪法保障。”
Born in the U.S.A.: Protecting the right of birthright citizenship
June 21, 2026 / 9:17 AM EDT / CBS News
Birthright citizenship is spelled out in the first line of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
It means everyone born in the United States is automatically a U.S. citizen at birth, said University of Virginia law professor Amanda Frost, regardless of any aspect of their parentage or lineage, “with very narrow exceptions, being for the children of diplomats and invading occupying armies. Everyone else is a citizen at birth.”
Frost says there is no ambiguity about the Constitutional issue of this citizenship clause. But a poll by the Pew Research Center shows that the American public is pretty much evenly divided on whether citizenship should be granted at birth to the children of undocumented immigrants – 50 percent say yes, 49 percent say no.
Beacon Press
In January 2025, President Trump issued an executive order stating that “the Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States.” The order would deny citizenship to the vast majority of children born to parents here illegally or temporarily. Roughly a quarter of a million children a year would be affected.
The executive order was blocked by a lower court, and is now before the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court first weighed in on the issue of citizenship nearly 170 years ago, in what’s generally considered its most disgraceful opinion: the infamous decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford. “This is the decision from 1857, in which the Supreme Court said that no Black person, whether enslaved or free, could ever be a citizen of the United States,” said Frost. “Chief Justice Taney, who wrote that opinion, said, ‘If you don’t like it, you can amend the Constitution.’”
And that’s just what happened, after the Civil War in 1868, with the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment. “The Reconstruction Congress wanted to make it clear that all four million formerly-enslaved people were citizens of the United States,” said Frost. “They also addressed the fact that more and more immigrants were coming to U.S. shores, and they recognized that the children of immigrants would also be citizens.”
Though he was born in America, Wong Kim Ark was denied re-entry to the United States in 1895 due to the Chinese Exclusion Act. National Archives/Interim Archives/Getty Images
But 30 years later, the case of Wong Kim Ark came before the Supreme Court. Born in San Francisco to Chinese parents, Wong was denied reentry to the U.S. after a trip to China. Wong fought back, insisting on his rights as an American citizen.
“For me, Wong Kim Ark represents the common man,” said Norman Wong, a descendant of Wong Kim Ark. “He wasn’t rich. He wasn’t famous. He didn’t have any extraordinary abilities. What he did [have] was the willingness to stand up and assert his right as an American.”
At a time of virulent anti-Chinese bigotry, the court ruled in Wong’s favor, which seemed to settle the issue of birthright citizenship.
But there have been dissenters.
“The reality is that the clause is very terse, and there are a number of issues that it did not address directly,” said political scientist Rogers Smith. “And the issue that is of greatest concern today is the status of children of unauthorized aliens, and that was an issue that no one who supported the clause or opposed the clause addressed at the time of the 14th Amendment’s writing and ratification.”
The Trump administration has relied on the scholarship of Smith to make its case. Smith, who co-wrote a book on birthright citizenship in 1985, when he was a professor at Yale, believes that Congress has the power to limit citizenship for those born to parents here illegally. “I think that it has been a mistake for more than a half-century for Congress – and often advocates for various causes – to try to push these decisions onto the courts,” said Smith. “Congress is not playing anywhere close to the role that it is supposed to be playing in the American constitutional system.”
He believes that, instead of pushing issues onto the courts to resolve, they should be decided by the elected representatives of the people.
But while Smith’s work has been cited by those who want to restrict birthright citizenship, Smith himself is opposed to the Trump administration’s efforts. He says he feels terrible that his scholarship is cited by those who want to restrict birthright citizenship: “It did become an argument that has been used by people who are virulently anti-immigrant and often making the case with derogatory stereotypes of immigrants.”
The majority of countries with universal birthright citizenship are in the Americas. But most of the world has been moving away from it.
In January 2005, Ireland – the last European country to guarantee it – ended birthright citizenship, after 79 percent of the country voted to restrict it.
Mariam Sobayo (featured recently in The New York Times) was born in Dublin to Nigerian immigrants. The youngest of five siblings, she was born just one month after the country rescinded automatic birthright citizenship.
“I wanted to go to Disneyland, and we would always ask my mom, ‘When are we going to Disneyland? When are we going to Disneyland?’ And she’d always tell us, ‘Soon,’” Sobayo told “Sunday Morning.” “But then I was trying to connect the dots and wondering like, what’s holding us back here? And I realized, ‘Oh, my sister’s a citizen. My other sister’s a citizen. My mom’s a citizen now.’ But then I realized I’m the one that’s not a citizen. I’m the reason why we can’t travel.”
Mariam Sobayo, the youngest of three, was born after Ireland changed its law regarding birthright citizenship, so that while her sisters were Irish citizens, she was not. Family Photo
With no passport, Sobayo was stateless, even though Ireland was the only country she’d ever known. She’d even learned to speak Irish. “Every child born in the state of Ireland has to speak Irish,” she said. “You pretty much learn Irish from ages seven to, like, 18, and to really immerse myself in it, and then also think, ‘I’m learning a language in a country I don’t even feel like I have roots to, because I’m having to prove tooth and nail that I belong here.’”
It was a complicated process, but in August 2023, when she was 18, Sobayo, now a social worker, finally became an Irish citizen. “It kind of just felt like my life was finally beginning,” she said. “I went a bit crazy booking holidays. I finally felt like the world was my oyster, we can finally do a family holiday. We can finally just start to live without that excessive worry on the back of my mind.”
Frost said, “Immigration is a complicated global issue with no easy answers. One clear non-answer is to get rid of birthright citizenship in this country.”
Frost believes part of what makes America exceptional is its longstanding embrace of immigrants: “If you look at Fortune 500 companies, about half of them are run by immigrants or the children of immigrants. Children of immigrants do incredibly well in this country, because they’re integrated quickly into this nation. We do that better than Europe.”
She says that, though she disagrees with President Trump’s executive order, she also thinks something good can come out of the conversations being had about birthright citizenship: “If there’s something good that comes out of this, it’s that we get to talk about the goals of birthright citizenship, the fact that it was intended and passed in America to ensure equality, that it’s consistent with these founding American values that rejected inheritable monarchy. If we’re all born equal, let’s not end this constitutional guarantee that fulfills these founding values of our nation.”