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If the Trump administration had its way, babies born on U.S. soil from today onwards would no longer be granted birthright citizenship automatically.
Yesterday marked 30 days since President Donald Trump signed an executive order to unilaterally redefine the Constitution and federal law by denying citizenship to children born in the U.S. if their parents are “unlawfully” present or have “lawful but temporary” status in the country.
That meant that in addition to those seeking asylum, families with visas who have been living and working in the U.S. legally for years also found themselves trapped in uncertain territory — particularly those who are expecting a child imminently.
Among those affected are highly skilled immigrants on H-1B visas typically working in tech, healthcare, engineering, and finance.
The visas were at the center of a MAGA feud that split the American political right.
“With the recent executive order from President Trump, we are feeling increasingly anxious,” Ganesh, a 37-year-old software engineer from India whose wife is due to give birth to their second child in April, told The Independent. Ganesh is a pseudonym given for privacy concerns, as are the other names of people quoted in this story who are impacted by this policy.
“After doing everything that is being asked, you do everything correctly, follow the law, follow the rule of land. But still, we are stuck. We are stuck in this limbo.”
The families now face an anxious wait for the courts to weigh in following fierce resistance to the administration’s bid to curtail automatic birthright citizenship. For the first time, an appellate court stepped in on the issue and denied Trump’s bid Wednesday night following a move to block the executive order by four judges. One argued in a ruling that, despite Trump’s claims to the contrary, “he is not a king and he cannot rewrite the Constitution with the stroke of a pen.”
The Trump administration also faces at least 10 lawsuits from pregnant women, civil rights groups, and officials from across the country.
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Ganesh, who lives in New Jersey, has been in the U.S. for over a decade, having relocated here for work in 2014 on an H-1B visa. His green card application has been approved, but due to the backlog he will have to wait years for its arrival. He contacted The Independent after a call out for affected families by the Area 51 podcast, which examines the Indian American immigrant experience.
“We were, frankly, shattered,” Ganesh said when the order was issued. In April, Ganesh and his wife Riddhi, 34, also a software engineer, are expecting another girl.
“I have spent some of the best years of my professional life here, contributing to this country, but now the uncertainty surrounding the new regulations has made me question whether we made the right decision to remain in the U.S.,” he added.
More than one million applicants from India have to wait decades, or even longer, for their green cards largely because of the Immigration and Nationality Act. It caps the number of green cards available from a single country at 7 percent, regardless of population size. Due to India’s large population, applicants from there experience a particularly huge backlog.
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Ganesh’s six-year-old daughter, Laxmi, is a U.S. citizen. “My daughter knows only one country — that is the United States,” Ganesh said. “This is our home.”
Vikas and Adidi, also from India, are expecting their first child in July. The couple, who live in Michigan, are both working as engineers on H-1B visas.
They planned to settle for life in the U.S. after living and working here for a decade but, like Ganesh and Riddhi, are waiting for the outcome of the court battles over Trump’s order.
The couple said they are “trying to stay positive” to limit the stress during Adidi’s pregnancy.
“We don’t know what will happen,” Adidi said. “The whole purpose of having a kid is not to have American citizenship. Our kid will be loved no matter what, whether they are an American citizen or an Indian citizen. So we just want to maintain that attitude.”
“And we’re not here just to become American citizens,” Vikas added. “We are here for better work, a better life, and we’re building that here. We are just happy to have a child.”
While doing their best to stay upbeat, Adidi conceded that she worries about what would happen to her child’s immigration status when they turn 21 if Trump succeeds.
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For now, it is a complete unknown and she will have to wait for the outcome in the courts for an answer.
“Once they are about 21, they don’t have any status. They cannot be dependent on us. That’s when these kids get affected. That’s when we get scared,” she said. “Because now they have lived their whole life in the United States, with all the education system, they have their friends. Everything is here, and suddenly they have nothing.”
Scores of pregnant women who are also U.S. visa holders have been sharing similar stories on Reddit.
“Expecting our first child in July. This is very heart breaking,” one user who claims to have been in the U.S. for 10 years on a H-1B visa wrote. “We worked our asses off to survive here, studied here, paid out of state tuition fees, got through the h1b lottery, have been paying all taxes, contributing to 401K…this is very very unfair on us.”
“I’ve been in the U.S. for the last 12 years. I’m on H1B still because we are from a country with a huge wait. I’m 17 weeks pregnant and I am so depressed,” another posted.
Democratic Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington State has vowed to do “everything within her power” to protect immigrant families and accused the Trump administration of spreading “chaos” and “fear” with the order.
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“As the only member of Congress to have been on an H-1B visa, I understand the fear and frustration of families who are now worried about what an attempt to end birthright citizenship will mean for their children,” Jayapal told The Independent.
“Many of these individuals have worked at American companies on valid work visas for years, if not decades. In many cases, they came to this country for college, have spent their entire adult lives here and are buying houses and raising American families,” she said.
The congresswoman said that ending birthright citizenship is unconstitutional.
She continued: “The purpose of these visas is to attract talent to our country’s workforce – doctors, researchers, scientists, tech workers – who want to move our country forward. Many of these people want to become citizens and continue contributing to a country that some have called home for decades, but unfortunately, for workers from India for example, there is a 200-year backlog to transition into more permanent status.”
For now, all the expectant parents can do is wait.
“That’s the only thing that we can do right now,” Ganesh said. “There’s nothing else.”
