President Trump certainly created an uproar by announcing he would issue an executive order eliminating birthright citizenship.

Sen. Susan Collins disagrees, and said: “If you are born in this country you are an American. To me it’s that simple (“Collins, King denounce Trump’s stance on birthright citizenship,” Oct. 31).

Is it that simple? Hardly. There have been several court cases sorting out this issue, with rulings made, for example, that children born to foreign diplomats are not U.S. citizens, and that Native Americans are U.S. citizens. No decision has ever been made on children born to illegal aliens.

It all revolves around the 14th Amendment phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” with many different interpretations of that phrase. In some respects, this amounts to a debate on “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.”

One current practice, “birth tourism,” should concern every American. Wealthy pregnant foreign women jet into the United States, have their babies, collect birth certificates, Social Security cards and U.S. passports, and jet back to their country of origin. The federal government cracked down on this earlier this year, but the simple idea of this abuse of our system is appalling (“Feds crack down on birth tourism at ‘maternity hotels,’ ” New York Post, January 10, 2018).

It is not clear if President Trump will follow through on his threat to issue an Executive Order curtailing these abuses of our immigration system, but it is definitely not “that simple.”

Bob Casimiro

Bridgton

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