April 1, 2026
This is personal for me as a son of immigrants. It is personal for our communities, for our families. We need to make sure that birthright citizenship continues.”
City Attorney of San Francisco David Chiu shared an impassioned conversation with several members of our Elected and Appointed Officials Network. Birthright citizenship is central to our country’s history and identity as a whole. The United States, as we know it today, would not–quite literally–exist without the countless contributions made by immigrant craft, leadership, and heart.
Birthright citizenship stems from the principle of jus soli, that all children born in the United States are U.S. citizens. This principle was enshrined in the constitution in 1868 when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified to repudiate the Dred Scott decision that denied Black people the protections of U.S. citizenship. In 1898, the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed that children born in the U.S. to immigrant parents were entitled to U.S. citizenship through United States v. Wong Kim Ark.
On April 1st, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Trump v. Barbara, a class-action lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship for certain people. Trump’s birthright citizenship order currently declares that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not U.S. citizens.
“The story of birthright citizenship is as San Francisco as it gets,” Attorney Chiu said. “Over 127 years ago, a Chinese American named Wong Kim Ark—born in our city, born in our country— successfully challenged an anti-immigrant federal government that was trying to deny him his citizenship.”
Creating a democracy that our communities—and our country—deserve starts with us.
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