By June this year, children born to Filipinos not only among the “TNTs” but more so to those who are in the country lawfully — thousands of them nurses on working visas — may no longer acquire citizenship at birth.
These children could be born as undocumented and subject for deportation if the Supreme Court upholds President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14160 he issued in January 2025 eliminating universal birthright citizenship — a pathway that for generations has always been open to Filipinos.
A ruling is expected in June 2026 amid hopes that the conservative justices will set aside their fidelity to Trump to uphold the US Constitution.
“At the heart of this issue is the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which confers citizenship upon all persons “born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” San Francisco-based immigration lawyer Lou Tancinco explained.
Tancinco said since the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in US v. Wong Kim Ark in 1898, “American jurisprudence has consistently interpreted this clause as embodying the jus soli principle — the right of citizenship by place of birth, irrespective of the immigration status of one’s parents.”
A Penn State study found that Asian immigrants would face the highest relative impact: 41 affected births per 1,000 Asian immigrants. Since Filipinos represent one of the largest Asian immigrant groups, that statistic would create thousands of next generation undocumented Filipino population.
“This policy change would have a disproportionate effect to tens of thousands of registered nurses and healthcare professionals admitted under H-1B or TN visas, specialty occupation workers across various industries, graduate and undergraduate students on F-1 and J-1 visas, and J1 exchange visitors and E1/E2 treaty traders,” according to Tancinco.
Tancinco warned that eliminating birthright citizenship for children of nurses and healthcare workers could prove “a powerful disincentive to continued service” at a time when America already faces persistent healthcare workforce shortages.
Although there are more TNTs (in local parlance, tago nang tago, or without legal papers) — estimated at 350,000 — they have fewer children born in the United States. TNTs usually arrive single, in their 20s and 30s or married with children back home. They send remittances home, and usually live in isolation, avoiding socializing with kababayans for fear of being snitched to ICE by a MAGA Pinoy TNT, the “Turo Ng Turo” kind.
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Even if they wanted kids here, they can’t afford to split resources, and the unpredictability of their stay makes it impossible anyway. Unless they marry a US citizen – which changes everything, but that’s the exception. Even as they age, with no legal status, no stability and constant deportation risk, their family is back home, waiting for remittances and balikbayan boxes.
Birth tourism
Wealthy Filipinos and those who have relatives here willing to shelter them do come to the US specifically to birth children for citizenship, then leave. Trump’s executive order uses this abuse as justification for eliminating birthright citizenship entirely.
But as Tancinco argues, that’s a failure of enforcement, not a reason to punish children. The job of detecting birth tourism should fall to consuls, to visa officers and to border control agents — not to a child born in an American hospital to parents who work here legally, even if temporary.
In both cases, whether born to temporary professionals or birth-tourism parents, their children would be treated as Filipino nationals by operation of Philippine citizenship law, which applies the principle of jus sanguinis – citizenship by descent from a Filipino parent.
Under Trump’s executive order, parents of newborns need to prove under penalty of perjury that at least one parent is a US citizen or a green card holder. Otherwise, the Social Security Administration will block the automatic issuance of a Social Security Card and a US birth certificate.
The heart of this anxiety is the elimination of the 21-year anchor. In a traditional Filipino-American story, a US-born child has always been the bridge to unite the family in America, especially to TNT and birth-tourism parents. Currently, when that child turns twenty-one, they gain the legal standing to sponsor their parents for residency, effectively remedying a mixed-status household. But if birthright citizenship is eliminated, that lifeline is cut.
Green card holders
What’s unfair, Tancinco said, would be the prospective denial of US citizenship to children born to Filipino nationals holding temporary status but not yet green card holders.
Trump’s executive order exempts babies born to green card holders. But the backlog for Filipinos is so severe that many wait over a decade for that status.
If a child is born one day before the parent’s green card is approved, they are born in a legal limbo – a Pinoy TNT by birth. If they are born one day after, they are a citizen.
“Birthright citizenship is more than a legal principle; it is the anchor that keeps families together and allows them to contribute fully to the country they call home,” Tancinco said.
Without it, the Filipino-American experience risks being reduced to contract labor, an OFW welcomed for work but denied for bloodline.
Instead of depriving them of their birthrights, we should welcome these children. The ones born to nurses, engineers, students and all those who’ve established families here lawfully.
Coming from educated, hardworking, and earning families, these children carry an inherited drive to succeed – they represent a gainful contribution to America’s future. So why deprive this country of immigrants that we need? – Rappler.com
Oscar Quiambao is a former reporter for The Philippine Daily Inquirer who now lives in San Francisco. ]]>