Birthright citizenship: Included in the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. It cannot be revoked without a constitutional amendment. The president has no constitutional role in the amendment process.

The current political climate has overshadowed the fact that large numbers of us still believe that overall immigration has positive economic effects. And facts that may support this view, for example that high-skilled immigrants pay taxes and help make America wealthier, are often drowned out by anti-immigration rhetoric. A focus of this rhetoric are the claims that admitting low-skilled immigrants adversely affects native low-skilled workers and immigrants take disproportionate advantage of government assistance programs.

Every president has used the “threat to national security” to bolster political standing and support, but this administration is doing so to an unprecedented degree, especially with the issue of immigration. It consistently claims that refugees pose a security threat, a claim that it has been kept alive by dismissing an intelligence assessment in 2017 that showed that refugees did not present a significant threat to the United States. This intelligence assessment was replaced by one supporting the administration’s claims.