Schmitt, Eric: Citizenship is the essential bond between a nation and its people. In a republic like ours, that bond carries enormous weight because in the United States, sovereignty doesn't belong to a king or ruling class. It belongs to the American people themselves. Citizenship defines the legal recognition of who the American people are. Citizenship defines the political community that governs the United States. It defines who exercises the sovereign authority of this republic. For most of our history, Americans understood citizenship in straightforward terms. It reflected allegiance to the United States. It meant loyalty to this country and attachment to its institutions. It meant belonging to the American nation. But over the past several decades, that understanding has steadily been pushed aside. Lawyers, activists, and policy makers in Washington have advanced the idea that citizenship has little to do with allegiance or membership in the national community. Under that interpretation, citizenship is devoid of connection to the American people. Instead, regardless of if your parents are tourists, foreign students, or illegally in the country, if you're born here, you are automatically a citizen in equal standing with the American people, even if you have no connection to the national community. This is a dramatic departure of how most nations understand citizenship and has produced predictable results. Foreign nationals travel to the United States late in pregnancy for the purpose of securing American citizenship for their children. An entire birth tourism industry has emerged around that goal. Illegal immigration is fueled by the belief that a child born here will receive automatic citizenship. And one of the most serious institutions of the American Republic is increasingly treated like a loophole in the immigration system. Citizenship should never be a loophole. Citizenship should mean belonging. Every serious nation recognizes that citizenship reflects membership in a national community. It reflects allegiance. It reflects loyalty to the country and its laws. Nations also recognize something else. They have the sovereign right to define the boundaries of their own political community. A nation that cannot determine who belongs to its political community begins to lose control of its own sovereignty. A nation that can't define who belongs to it has lost control of its sovereignty. The Constitution addresses this issue directly. The 14th Amendment provides that all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States. Those words matter. Subject to the jurisdiction thereof. That phrase reflects allegiance. It reflects political authority. It reflects belonging to the United States. The Citizenship Clause was written in the aftermath of the Civil War to correct one of the greatest injustices in American history. It guaranteed citizenship to freed slaves and their children who owed full allegiance to this country but had been denied their rightful place in the Republic. The Citizenship Clause was written to correct a grave injustice. It was not written to create an incentive to prop up our tourism industry or incentivize illegally crossing our borders. Yet today, that is effectively how it is treated. As part of today's hearing, we will also hear from Peter Schweitzer, whose recent work raises another concern tied to birthright citizenship. In his new book, The Invisible Coup, which was a number one New York Times bestseller earlier this year, he investigated a rising Manchurian generation of Chinese nationals with CCP ties who have exploited the United States' automatic citizenship rules. China has sent individuals to give birth in America, securing U.S. citizenship for up to 1.5 million, million Chinese nationals who will spend their entire lives in China but can vote in our elections, attend our schools, and receive our government benefits. President Trump's executive order has forced the country to confront this issue directly. It raises a basic question. Does the Constitution require the United States to grant citizenship automatically to the children of illegal aliens or temporary visitors? That question is now before the Supreme Court. But Congress has a responsibility to examine the constitutional text, the historical record, and the consequences of the policies we have today. That's why we're having this hearing, and that's why this hearing matters. And the timing of this discussion could not be more appropriate. This year, the United States marks its 250th year. Two hundred and fifty years ago, the founders created a constitutional republic built on the idea of self-governing people. Citizenship was the legal expression of that idea. It defined the community that governs the country. It defined the American people. For two and a half centuries, the American republic has endured through war, crisis, and enormous change. But institutions like citizenship do not endure by accident. Nations do not endure by accident. They endure because each generation chooses to defend the institutions it inherited. Anniversaries like this one are not only moments to celebrate our history. They're also moments to ask serious questions about our future. Who are we as a people? What does it mean to be an American? And what institutions must we protect if the American experiment is going to endure for another century and beyond? Few institutions are more central to these questions than citizenship itself. Citizenship is the legal expression of the American people. It carries the responsibilities of freedom from one generation to the next. If citizenship becomes detached from allegiance and belonging, the institution itself begins to weaken. If citizenship loses its meaning, the foundations of the republic begin to weaken from within. So the question before us today is a simple one. Is American citizenship the inheritance of a nation and its people? Or is American citizenship simply a hollow legal definition without protections against fraud, abuse, and bad actors? Protecting the meaning of American citizenship is not just a matter of immigration policy. It's a matter of preserving the American republic and the American people. I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today. my friend of the subcommittee, Senator Peter Welsh, for his opening remarks.