Donald Trump's Wish to Change the 14th Amendment Could Have Impacted Melania & Barron's Citizenship

Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign is taking a hard right turn when it comes to his immigration policy. The former president is leaning heavily into the idea of banning birthright citizenship, going as far as to say that he would do it via executive order if he’s back in the White House. However, he may not have thought this completely through since his wife was not a naturalized citizen when she gave birth to their son, Barron, in 2006.

The 14th Amendment in the U.S. Constitution grants the right to U.S. citizenship to anyone born in the country. Donald Trump wants to eliminate that right for children born on U.S. soil to undocumented immigrants because he believes it would “choke off a major incentive for continued illegal immigration, deter more migrants from coming and encourage many of the aliens Joe Biden has unlawfully let into our country to go back to their home countries.”

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The former president may not think the rules apply to him, but his policy could have affected his wife and son. Melania came to the U.S. on an EB-1 work visa in 2001, but she did not become a naturalized citizen until later in 2006 — after Barron’s March 20 birth. While she wasn’t undocumented, Donald Trump’s policy wouldn’t necessarily guarantee a clear path to citizenship for Barron since only one parent was born in this country. It makes you wonder if anyone on his election team talked this idea through with him before he took it out on the campaign trail.

Donald Trump flirted with this idea before in his first run for president in 2015, and before the midterm elections in 2018, but he abandoned the plan after then-Speaker Paul Ryan let him in on a little secret. “You can’t do something like this via executive order,” the congressman reportedly told him, per NBC News. Without Ryan in Congress, Donald Trump seems to think he can do anything without consequence if he’s back in the Oval Office.

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