When I started this blog nine years ago, it never occurred to me that one day I’d need to explain to kids what birthright citizenship is and its history. I talked frequently about immigrant rights and the need for reforms that provided undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship.
Still, I assumed it would always be taken for granted that children born in the United States are citizens. After all, it’s in the constitution!
Yet, here we are. On day 1 of his second term, President Trump issued an executive order ending birthright citizenship for children whose parents were undocumented. This May, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on the topic.
This is an issue that could affect kids directly (if the nightmare executive order is allowed to stand) and that already affects children indirectly (through the hatred the order encourages even if it’s struck down.) So it’s important that children understand what birthright citizenship is, and how it came to be so important in the United States.
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What’s inside this kid-friendly video series on birthright citizenship
I’ve created a video series that you can show directly to kids (around ages 8+), or that you can use to educate yourself and talk to kids on your own. Each video is just under 3 minutes and is my best attempt to use simple language that kids can grasp.
Part 1 explains what it means to be undocumented and how being a citizen gives a person particular rights.
Part 2 explains the history of Black Americans not having citizenship rights before the Civil War, and how the 14th amendment changed this.
Part 3 discusses a 127-year-old court case that tested whether all people, including the children of Chinese immigrants born in the United States, were entitled to birthright citizenship.
Part 4 gives young people (and their grownups) action steps to defending immigrant rights, especially the right to birthright citizenship.
Video 1: What is birthright citizenship and why does it matter?
Key points I make in the video:
✏️Being undocumented means you don’t have papers that say you can legally live in the United States. Getting these papers is really, really difficult.
✏️Adults who are undocumented have to worry about being placed in immigration jail (even if they haven’t committed any crimes), being taken advantage of at work, and the chance of being deported (permanently kicked out of the U.S.) and sent to another country where there may be violence or a lack of jobs.
✏️One thing undocumented moms and dads have been able to count on is that if their children are born in the United States, they are citizens. That means their kids won’t have to be afraid of things like being put in immigration jail.
✏️When you’re a citizen, you can live in the U.S. permanently, you can vote in elections, and you can even run for offices like the mayor of your city or for Congress.
✏️President Trump is now trying to take away citizenship from children who were born in the United States if their parents are undocumented.
Related post: 10 things families and educators can do to support immigrant children
Video 2: The history of U.S. citizenship for African Americans
Key points I make in the video:
⭐ President Trump’s order to end birthright citizenship goes against 120 years of history.
⭐To understand the history of citizenship, we need to look at the Supreme Court cases involving an enslaved man named Dred Scott.
⭐In 1857, the Supreme Court said that Mr. Scott, and all people of African descent, were not citizens.
⭐ After the Civil War was over and slavery was abolished, members of Congress decided to spell it out in the Constitution that everyone born in the United States was a citizen. This made it clear that African Americans were citizens.
⭐ But some members of Congress like Senator Edgar Cowan didn’t vote for the 14th amendment. He said he was worried it would give citizenship to the children of Chinese immigrants born in the U.S.. Many white Americans at that time had racist ideas about Chinese Americans, and they opposed the idea of any people of Chinese descent ever being citizens.
Related post: Talking to my 6 year old about immigrant rights
Video 3: Anti-Chinese racism and birthright citizenship
Key points I make in the video:
✔️ Although the 14th amendment established the idea of birthright citizenship, powerful people who held racist ideas about Asian Americans wanted to restrict citizenship.
✔️ The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 said that Chinese immigrants could not go through the process to become citizens, but it did not say anything about the children of Chinese immigrants who were born in the United States.
✔️ In 1895, an American-born man of Chinese descent, Wong Kim Ark, travelled to China to visit family. He was barred from re-entering the United States, despite having three notarized letters from white American friends verifying that he was a citizen born in the U.S.
✔️ Mr. Kim Ark’s case went all the way to the Supreme Court, and the justices ruled that because he was born in the U.S., he was a citizen, despite the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Resource: Kids ages 8 – 14 can learn more about the case of Wong Kim Ark, plus lots of other valuable information about Chinese American history, in Sarah-Soonling Blackburn’s book Exclusion and the Chinese American Story.
Video 4: Learning more and speaking up
Key points I make in this video + additional resources:
🎤 Speak up when you hear other kids repeat stereotypes or hurtful things about immigrants (examples of what to say shared in the video.)
🎤 Learn more about immigrant families experiences. Reading books is one way. I have lots of children’s book recommendations about immigrants and refugees here.
🎤 Contact your members of Congress and tell them to protect immigrant rights.
- Find out who your members of Congress are and how to contact them here.
- Sign this petition from the ACLU (or use it to draft a message in your own words.)
