Draft Article by Professor Gerald L. Neuman: Lessons for Birthright Citizenship from Suspension of Deportation
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HRP Associate Director and J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign, and Comparative Law Gerald L. Neuman has released a new draft article, “Lessons for Birthright Citizenship from Suspension of Deportation.” While much has been written about why the Executive Order purporting to abolish birthright citizenship violates the Fourteenth Amendment, Professor Neuman argues there is a “prior issue that has received less discussion”: the Executive Order “also violates the Immigration and Nationality Act” (INA).
The draft article examines this statutory issue through the “law and practice of suspension of deportation” from 1940 into the 1950s, drawing on previously unpublished documentation obtained from government files. Neuman shows how these documents demonstrate a repeated confirmation of the “shared understanding of Congress and the executive branch that children born in the United States to unlawfully present parents, and to parents whose presence was lawful but temporary, were citizens of the United States.” The article concludes that this historical practice “contradicts revisionist theories” and confirms that the INA “decrees a broad rule of jus soli citizenship,” offering an independent ground sufficient to invalidate the Executive Order.
Appendices to the article make available examples of these previously unpublished suspension decisions. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5991454