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FIRST ON FOX: In the midst of a blitz of Republicans shaking their fists at the Supreme Court, one Senate Republican is warning of national security consequences for the court’s bombshell birthright citizenship decision.
Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., worries that the court’s 6-3 decision leaves America vulnerable to threats, particularly from China. In an interview with Fox News Digital, he explained a multistep path that lawmakers and the administration could take to tackle the issue.
“I want to get this done because I really believe that the future of our country is on the line,” Schmitt said. “We can’t have Chinese generals sending their wives to this country to give birth and going back for 18 years and coming back and being citizens. It’s insane.”
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While some lawmakers want a constitutional amendment and others are pushing legislation, Schmitt has a foot in both camps. He contended that in all, there is “a short-term, medium-term and long-term solution.”
“The short-term is executive action, the medium-term is our legislative action that we could take, and then the long-term solution is the constitutional amendment,” Schmitt said. “I think we should pursue all of those.”
The clearest shot to counter the court’s decision would be through a constitutional amendment, but legislation may be the more realistic route, he said. He’s following the breadcrumb trail left by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh to do it, too.
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“Congress could — consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment — amend or otherwise enact new legislation establishing exceptions to birthright citizenship for children born to foreign citizens unlawfully or temporarily in the country,” Kavanaugh wrote in the court’s decision. “But Congress has not yet done so.”
Schmitt’s legislation would clarify the language of the 14th Amendment. The court interpreted the words “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” within the text to effectively mean all children born in the U.S. are automatically granted citizenship.
His plan is to modify the language to include “not subject to a foreign power,” which he contended would return the 14th Amendment to its original intent and prevent foreign adversaries from quietly scoring citizenship.
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“That would get back to what the meaning was supposed to be, that the court got wrong, which would give us the opportunity, I think, for potentially the decision to be overturned, because Congress has clarified it,” Schmitt said.
But, like nearly every legislative push in the Senate, the 60-vote filibuster threshold is a barrier.
That means that Schmitt, or any Republican pushing a bill dealing with birthright citizenship, will need Democratic support to pass.
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Schmitt pointed to the late former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s bill from 1993, the Immigration Stabilization Act, which among other things sought to tweak the 14th Amendment to prevent children of illegal immigrants born in the U.S. from gaining citizenship, as a marker that at one point, Democrats supported the same thing he and Republicans are pushing for.
“It wasn’t that long ago that Harry Reid actually had legislation to deal with this issue,” he said. “And so, you know, are the Democrats going to be a party that learned their lesson from the Biden years where they were open borders and they let 15 to 20 million people here illegally?”
“They don’t believe in sovereignty that we can tell people who can come and who can go,” Schmitt continued. “Is that who they are, or are they gonna make a shift more towards where the American people are at?”