White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller argued on X Monday that the U.S. is running what he described as an “illegal suicidal” system of birthright citizenship, and said it should require far stricter limits on who is allowed to enter the country.
“One point not made enough on immigration: when you have a national program (an illegal suicidal one) of granting ‘birthright’ citizenship to the child of any and every foreigner who sets foot on your soil, you must be infinitely more cautious about who to allow into your country,” Miller wrote.
His comments fit within a broader effort by the Trump administration to challenge the long-standing practice under which most children born on U.S. soil are recognized as citizens. A New York Times report published Tuesday said Miller has increasingly framed immigration not only around new arrivals, but also around their U.S.-born children and the impact on future generations.
Miller has also claimed immigration leads to long-term social and economic costs—an argument economists and migration researchers have repeatedly contested.
In recent interviews, he has pointed to specific communities, including Somali Americans, as examples of what he described as multigenerational problems with assimilation. In a Fox News appearance, he said:
“With a lot of these immigrant groups, not only is the first generation unsuccessful. Again, Somalia is a clear example her. You see persistent issues in every subsequent generation. So you see consistent high rates of welfare use, consistent high rates of criminal activity, consistent failures to assimilate.”
Researchers and policy experts have pushed back on that characterization. Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. immigration policy program at the Migration Policy Institute, told NYT that research consistently shows the children of immigrants tend to achieve higher levels of education and earnings than their parents, and that integration strengthens over time. “Study after study has demonstrated the upward mobility of children of immigrants,” she said.
The dispute is unfolding as the Supreme Court has agreed to hear Trump’s challenge aimed at ending birthright citizenship for children born to undocumented immigrants and some temporary residents. The executive order—signed on Trump’s first day back in office—has been blocked by lower courts, which found it conflicts with the Fourteenth Amendment.
