When my grandfather fled Nazi Germany, he carried with him, across multiple borders, an unwavering faith that the future was waiting on the other side. What he found was larger than any one man’s journey to safety: the American commitment to each person born on this soil that they belong.
This commitment, alongside my grandfather’s extraordinary courage to dream, meant that his son – my father – would be fully American. And I, a granddaughter he did not yet know, would be as well.
Birthright citizenship is one of the Constitution’s most fundamental guarantees: that every child born in the United States is a citizen of the United States, entitled to all the rights of every other citizen regardless of how or where their American story began. This week, when the Supreme Court ruled in Trump v. Barbara to affirm the 14th Amendment, many people cried tears of relief and cheered that the fight had been won.
But winning a battle that should never have been fought in the first place robs the victory of some measure of its glory. The fact that a challenge to such a fundamental principle of the Constitution was able to reach the highest court in the land, and be denied by a worryingly close 6-3 margin, is a stark reminder that the very foundations of this nation, and the values underpinning it, are under attack, and that we must never take them for granted.
Now is not the time for complacency. Not while a small yet powerful group of people loudly question whether children born on this soil belong to it. And not after years of political efforts to cast Jews, Muslims, immigrants, refugees, LGBTQ+ people and other marginalized communities as outsiders, determined to define whose place in American society is secure and whose is not. No president, no administration has the right to challenge our legacy of welcome, because it doesn’t belong to one person; it belongs to us all.
Why birthright citizenship matters to Jewish history
HIAS, the organization I lead, was founded more than 140 years ago on New York City’s Lower East Side. Its mission, which I’m proud to carry forward, was to support Jews fleeing persecution and seeking the chance to rebuild their lives in the United States. Since then, we have been at the forefront of every wave of Jewish immigration, supporting millions on their path to safety — whether arriving through Ellis Island, fleeing the Holocaust, or escaping religious persecution in Iran, the Former Soviet Union, or Cuba. In fact, we estimate that more than half of all American Jews are here in some part because of HIAS.
Those families trusted that America would provide the kind of safety and certainty their ancestors had rarely known. That a history filled with precarious legal status and conditional belonging would be replaced by a promise, and that their children would never find their birthright under siege. That promise and that certainty must not end with us. We must not waver from our responsibility to defend the sanctity of welcome and stand alongside refugees and immigrants building their lives here today.
Just over three dozen countries, most of which are in the Western Hemisphere, grant citizenship to anyone born within the country’s borders (known as jus soli, “right of the soil”) regardless of their parents’ nationality. Most other countries primarily confer citizenship based on the nationality of the parents (jus sanguinis, “right of blood”), with birthright citizenship only available under limited circumstances.
Those limits explain why generations of immigrants, including Jews, have successfully immigrated to the United States when they were forced out or had their citizenship stripped away elsewhere. They did so with the knowledge that despite the hardship they themselves endured, they were establishing a better future for their children and grandchildren. As a result, this country’s beautiful diversity continues to expand today, to new generations of immigrants and refugees.
More than a century after our founding, HIAS remains committed to helping people around the world, providing security, compassion and opportunity in a moment when refugees and immigrants are navigating heightened scrutiny and instability. Through our work in the US and across the globe, we see every day how important secure legal status is to immigrant families. Refugees fleeing conflict and persecution, asylum seekers in search of a second chance, and immigrants navigating complex legal systems depend on certainty and stability to plan their futures. When those protections are threatened, the impact is immediate: on children in classrooms, parents in workplaces and families trying to remain together.
The fight over belonging is not over
The challenge to birthright citizenship was never just about constitutional interpretation. It is part of a broader effort to redefine who gets to be an American — to replace a vision of citizenship grounded in equality, inclusion and hospitality with one rooted in hostility, exclusion and fear.
The proof of this came almost immediately. Within hours of the court’s decision, political leaders were already denouncing the ruling and encouraging other pathways to end birthright citizenship. This legal battle may have ended, but the political campaign — steeped in xenophobia, nativism and white supremacist ideology — has not. As long as there are those determined to narrow the circle of belonging, we must not mistake a courtroom victory for lasting security.
As America marks its 250th anniversary, American Jews should look backward and forward at the same time. We should remember with gratitude what this country made possible for our families and recognize with privilege what this difficult moment demands of us. The promise of safety and belonging that allowed Jewish immigrants to build new lives in the United States is the same promise that today’s refugees and immigrants deserve.
Defending birthright citizenship means defending the idea that America is defined by an unwavering commitment to equal citizenship under the law. That is the country my grandfather found. It is the country we have a responsibility to preserve.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.
