Politics

EXCLUSIVE: Sen. Eric Schmitt Urges Trump Admin To Do Something About Diplomats’ Kids Getting Illegal Citizenship Docs

Republican Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt (Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

Republican Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt urged the executive branch to investigate illegal grants of citizenship to foreign diplomats’ children on Thursday, the Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.

In a letter addressed to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, Schmitt detailed that foreign diplomats are having children during their missions and then claiming birthright citizenship for their children.

“Neither the Constitution nor federal statutory law grants foreign diplomats’ children birthright citizenship. Yet public reporting indicates that potentially thousands of foreign diplomats’ children have been given citizenship documentation,” Schmitt wrote in the letter that was first obtained by the DCNF. “Foreign diplomats’ children illegally procuring citizenship degrades the meaning of American citizenship, undermines our sovereignty, and threatens our national security.”

“I therefore urge both of your agencies to take immediate action to investigate the extent of illegal grants of citizenship documentation to foreign diplomats’ children, implement policies and procedures to prevent it from occurring in the future, identify the individuals who have illegally procured citizenship documentation in this manner, and revoke those individuals’ illegally procured citizenship documentation,” he added.

A 2017 report by the Korea Times found that more than 100 children of diplomats from the Republic of Korea have acquired birthright citizenship, Schmitt cited in his letter.

Under the Biden administration a publicly-issued updated blue list or white list is not available. A blue list is a list of diplomatic staff and their spouses and a white list contains the names of diplomatic mission employees, according to the U.S. Department of State website.

On June 30, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Trump v. Barbara that the president’s executive order seeking to deny birthright citizenship of children born in the U.S. to foreign nationals was unconstitutional.

However, Schmitt wrote in his letter that even though the Court’s majority in the case “wrongfully expanded birthright citizenship to cover the children of illegal aliens and temporarily present aliens, it too recognized that the children of diplomats do not acquire birthright citizenship.”

“Allowing diplomats’ children to claim birthright citizenship violates the Constitution, statutory law, decades of judicial and administrative practice, degrades the value and integrity of American citizenship, presents serious national security risks, and undermines our nation’s sovereignty,” the letter added. “American citizenship is the sacred bond between the sovereign ‘We the People’ and our government. We cannot allow it to be cheapened into a mere bureaucratic status to be usurped by diplomats and foreign functionaries who owe their allegiance to other countries.”

The Social Security Administration, health agencies, and people administering birth certificates do not ask about parents’ potential diplomat status when issuing them government documents, the Center for Immigration Studies found in 2011, Schmitt’s letter cited. Since the Biden administration did not release an updated blue or white list, it makes it harder for state or federal agencies to inquire into whether a child was born to diplomat parents.

“I respectfully request that the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security to take immediate action to investigate the extent of these illegal grants of citizenship documentation, implement policies and procedures to prevent it from occurring in the future, identify the individuals who have illegally procured citizenship documentation in this manner, and revoke those individuals’ illegally procured citizenship documentation,” Schmitt’s letter concluded.