Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

My name is Joshua Sheets.

Today is Tuesday, January 21, 2025.

And on today's show, I'm going to respond to a listener request who asked me to comment on the recently issued

executive order by President Trump, which purports to end the practice of full birthright citizenship.

Now, I'll talk briefly about the legality of it, delve briefly into the politics of it, and then I

want to give you some practical things that you and I can do on this subject, whether or not

we are legal U.S. citizens or not. And I want to give some advice for those who may be affected

by this. First, let's talk a little bit about the law.

What is the 14th Amendment? Well, if we go to the actual text of the U.S. Constitution,

we can find the 14th Amendment, and it's quite long, but the first section of it specifically tells us what we need.

And it says this, 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.

That's what the text of the 14th Amendment says.

That's my understanding of the history of the 14th Amendment. This was ratified soon after the ending of the U.S. Civil War. And in essence, it was ratified to protect the full citizenship status of black slaves, of newly freed black slaves in the United

States. And this was an important component of them. And of course, the reason that it's important

to affirm the full citizenship status of those born in the United States was it ended the idea

that, well, just because these African

slaves came from somewhere else that they were not entitled to U.S. citizenship.

The text of this amendment states that, yes, indeed, if you were born here, as most of the slaves

were by that time, if you were born here, then you're certainly fully entitled to the full status of citizenship,

just like all other citizens of the United States. Now, of course, born or naturalized is the key.

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