The Lion's Pride Volume 9 (January 2018) | Page 29

As the opening of the 14 th Amendment of the Constitution of the
United States reads (2009), “All Persons born or naturalized in the
United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the
United States and of the State wherein they reside. No state shall make
or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of
citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of
life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any
person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws” (Staff).
This change to the constitution in 1868, made the United States one of
only 30 countries worldwide to adopt a system of jus soli, meaning “law
of the soil” in Latin. The system of jus soli, otherwise known as
birthright citizenship, grants an infant citizenship to its place of birth
rather than to the birth country of its parents. The latter system is known
as jus sanguinis, or “by right of blood”, and is the system most common
throughout the world. Because of the ever-increasing political spotlight
on illegal immigration in the United States, should the country join the
majority of the world in returning to a citizenship system of jus
sanguinis?
As of 2015, an estimated 4.5 million children in the United States
lived with at least one parent who was an unauthorized immigrant
(Grabar). This is roughly the entire population of both King and
Snohomish counties combined. In 2016, Capps, Fix, and Zong
concluded that growing up with unauthorized immigrant parents places