Excellent history review essay describing who is an American and the value of birthright citizenship supported by SCOTUS

Echo opinion essay published in the Business Standard*. 

By Howard Chua-Eoan:  Once upon a time, the French were the most enthusiastic aspirational Americans. 

Magical realism of the American dream: 

Birthright, belonging and hope

Inspired by the revolution of 1776, as well as the victory of the Franco-American alliance over the British in the 1781, battle of Yorktown, French polemicists, patriots, philosophers and plebs waxed idealistic about migrating to the brand new nation to share in its promise — la félicité publique of the Enlightenment transformed into “the pursuit of happiness” of the United States (US) Declaration of Independence. The vast possibilities of the future compelled one enthusiast to rhapsodise, “What then is the American, this new man❓” 💜💗☆

The question has been asked again and again in the 250 years since July 4, 1776. On Tuesday, the US Supreme Court rejected the Trump Administration’s attempt to place curbs on the 158-year-old 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, which gives anyone born in the country citizenship by birthright. The debate seems to renew with each generation, if not with each year. By naturalization, the US adds about 800,000 new citizens annually — over a decade, a cohort bigger than the population of Hong Kong. 

In fact, the US produces far more freshly naturalized citizens than any other nation.  That’s apart from the estimated 3.5 million baby-citizens delivered each year. There is a metaphysical dimension to being born American in America. It means you are as American as anyone else born anywhere else in America. From Manhattan to Miami to Montana, Americans — as the late 18th century French pondered with awe — are privileged with geographical equality, and enter the world carrying an identity founded on place, not blood, with possibilities as immense as their landscape. Each is a plurality of one.

For now, though, let’s put aside the magic for realism. Americans have always been at odds with each other — often viciously — over who belongs to their promised land. Indeed, despite this week’s ruling, the US has become a much less welcoming place because of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) assaults on migrants (and almost anyone actually) driven by the populist rhetoric of Donald Trump and his (evil❗) acolytes. 

Today, even some newly-naturalized citizens advocate pulling up the ladder to curb immigration. Lawyers for skilled foreign job-seekers are now counselling their clients not to come to the US, reversing advice they’d provided for years.

And yet the American dream continues to draw people from around the world. Government statistics substantiate that magnetic power — in a backhanded way. Applications for immigration visas based on employment and family are backlogged for years, if not decades, as Bloomberg News notes. Depending on the applicant’s country of origin, the H-1B visa — which has been key to cheaper high-tech labor for Silicon Valley — continues to be heavily oversubscribed, in spite of lawyerly advice. It was perhaps the swiftest and most meritocratic way to prove your worth to a country you weren’t born in, but wanted to belong to. No longer. “It is far easier to obta-in any other type of major visa than an H-1B visa,” says a March 2025, report by the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonprofit research group focused on immigration, international trade, globalization and the economy.

Well, not quite every other type. Most family-sponsored would-be immigrants are stuck in the torturously long process for “green cards” that designate legal residents and put them on the road to naturalization. There’s an annual cap of 226,000 for those who aren’t immediate relatives of their sponsors; with about 7.1 million people currently waiting in that queue, many may not live to see the land they yearn for.

Moreover, the other evidence of America’s continuing pull is anecdotal. Even with the toll of (evil❗) ICE, people are still drawn to the US, even from supposedly blasé Europe. I track the restaurant industry on both sides of the Atlantic, and I know of cooks, sommeliers and servers in the United Kingdom (UK) who will jump at the first opportunity to show what they can do for an American kitchen. The continuous flow of Japanese chefs is evidence that economic powerhouses in East Asia are not immune to American magnetism. Often, the Brits try a short stint, an informal pop-up or hang around as unpaid stagiare (a controversial type of culinary internship) — all in the hope of convincing a US outfit to sponsor them through the costly paperwork required to win a long-term visa, perhaps even an O-1 for “individuals of extraordinary ability.”

It’s a long shot, but those from the 40-some countries in the US Visa Waiver Program (VWP) (including Japan, the UK and most members of the European Union) can use its provisions to enter and stay for as long as 90 days per visit. The VWP is meant to ease tourist travel but it also allows business-types to attend conferences and engage in dealmaking — just not paid labour. That’s leeway enough for anyone — not just restaurant folk — to make professional contacts. But there are limits: If the Border Control Protection agency decides there’s a pecuniary pattern to your travel, you may be served with a long-term ban.

From my perspective as an American abroad, I also find it revealing that the politics and events back home are often central to ordinary conversations in the UK as well as Europe and Asia. Mine are fully caught up in the latest developments as if related to their own well-being. It’s almost personal and domestic. It’s also bipartisan. While there is umbrage about the administration, there is also approval among the more MAGA-ty citizens of the world, who see a country finally aligned with their political proclivities. The recent run of right-wing victories in Latin America is an indicator that Trumpist America has become the spiritual promised land for a growing audience.

In fact, the US was also both beacon and caution back when there were only 13 states of the union. The Frenchman who asked wondrously about “the new man” was once an immigrant farmer in upstate New York and was appalled by slavery. The supposedly class-free republic wasn’t that at all and had embarked on the segregation of society by race. 

Indeed, the 14th Amendment was inspired by the dilemma faced by the children of slaves in the wake of emancipation and the Civil War. Speaking in all-encompassing language, it declared with constitutional authority that every child born in the US was a citizen. It was a remarkably judicious act for a country that would cruelly continue to impose racial identity — and thus social and economic status — based on “a drop of blood” well into the 20th century.

And the sequel was just as momentous. In 1898, the US Supreme Court decision upheld the language of the amendment to apply to the case of Wong Kim Ark, born in California to migrant Chinese parents. He sued after he was barred from re-entering the US after visiting China. This took place at the height of violent pogroms surrounding the imposition of the Chinese Exclusion Act. His victory ensured that citizenship was available to immigrants and their offspring, not just to the established communities of the country — and once again affirmed by the Supreme Court this week (in 2026).
Wong would work as a cook and vanish into obscurity after an itinerant life. The pursuit of happiness did not guarantee dreams would come true. That’s the irony of the “American Dream,” which was coined by the historian James Truslow Adams in The Epic of America. Writing amid the Great Depression, he said the notion isn’t just about prosperity “but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

Tensions about who gets to be American are unabated. In the wake of this week’s SCOTUS birthright decision, Trump declared he’d try to get his way via legislative sleights of hand. For now, it is the words of Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, that hold sway: “Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights — to freely participate in our political community. The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to every free-born person in this land. We keep that promise today.” That is an appropriate gift to the country on this momentous birthday: the dream, and the chance, are continued.

Howard Chua-Eoan is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion covering culture and business. He previously served as Bloomberg Opinion's international editor and is a former news director at Time magazine

*Business Standard is an Indian English-language daily edition newspaper,[5] also available in Hindi. Founded in 1975.