Larry Woods writes:

For 40 years in the constitutional law classes I teach at Tennessee State University, I have asked all my students to raise their hand if they are a citizen of the United States.

Usually, after some hesitation, everyone or almost everyone raises their hand and I promptly challenge them,”prove it to me”. Since we do not have membership cards for U.S. citizenship, after thought and discussion, students usually say “I have a birth certificate.”

Of course they don’t really have one with them, putting them at risk in these days of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, policing the streets, but they mean they can get an official copy somewhere from someone. So my next question to them is “Where is your parents’ birth certificate? And when you figure that out, what about your grandparents and great grandparents?”

Is a break in documentation in an earlier generation enough of a problem to deny your citizenship? Possibly ‘yes’ under the Trump executive order which four Supreme Court justices want to enforce. [Continue reading…]