Birthright citizenship: Trump claims only the US grants it, he's wrong
(CNN) US President Donald Trump vowed Tuesday to end birthright citizenship -- the process by which babies born in the country automatically become citizens -- by executive order, while claiming the US was the only nation around the world to grant such rights.
Though Trump says his legal counsel has assured him his plan is possible, lawmakers on both the left and right immediately pushed back against Trump's comments, made in an interview with news outlet Axios on HBO (CNN and HBO share a parent company, WarnerMedia). Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan said simply "you cannot end birthright citizenship with an executive order."
But while much of the focus was on the debate over the constitutionality of such a move, the President's other claim -- one that was demonstrably false -- went somewhat overlooked.
According to the CIA World Factbook, some three dozen countries around the world currently recognize jus soli, the Latin term for "right of the soil," commonly known in the US as birthright citizenship.
The majority of these nations are, like the US, part of the Americas and have a history of colonization and mass emigration from Europe, including Canada, Venezuela, Chile, Peru, Mexico, and Uruguay.
<snip>
Despite Trump's claim that he can revoke this right by executive order, it is almost certainly impossible without a constitutional amendment, the laborious process by which the US Congress and state governments can vote to change the constitution.
"The 14th Amendment's citizenship guarantee is clear," according to Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project. "This is a transparent and blatantly unconstitutional attempt to sow division and fan the flames of anti-immigrant hatred in the days ahead of the midterms."
Much more (Includes videos): https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/31/politics/birthright-citizenship-world-intl/index.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
Trump is dismantling all the progress that we've struggled to make for generations. No leader in our history has ever behaved this way before - the job of the president is to support and defend the constitution against all enemies, not enable our adversaries, and to make life better for the American people, not his grifting family and his corporate buddies. 
