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Children born after January 1, 2027, could enter the world without citizenship anywhere, under a law their territorial parents cannot vote against.
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Virginia Republican Representative Morgan Griffith says H.R. 9724 would stop birth tourism. Tourist births fell 92 percent before he filed, yet his bill could place 3.5 million territorial Americans under congressional control.
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Artwork credit: Anselm Kiefer, Innenraum (Interior), 1982. Watercolor, pencil, and collage. Hall Collection. © Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Steven Brookes Studio. Kiefer sets a lone artist’s palette beneath monumental authoritarian architecture. Governments can reduce equal citizenship to a hierarchy controlled by the state.
The bill would not immediately revoke citizenship from 3.5 million territorial Americans. It would allow Congress to decide which children receive citizenship at birth establishing a legal precedent future lawmakers could expand. German officials similarly protected citizenship for some people and denied others.
Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick revoked citizenship through four measures across eight years. Representative Morgan Griffith filed the first American version on July 16, 2026. Congress grants citizenship by statute in Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands. A later Congress may repeal those laws. Children born in those territories after January 1, 2027, could lack citizenship in any country.
Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick revoked citizenship through four measures across eight years. Representative Morgan Griffith filed the first American version on July 16, 2026. Congress grants citizenship by statute in Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands. A later Congress may repeal those laws. Children born in those territories after January 1, 2027, could lack citizenship in any country.
Chief Justice John Roberts struck down President Trump’s birthright citizenship order on June 30, 2026. That same day, Vice President JD Vance supported executive action on Laura Ingraham’s program. A Heritage Foundation official had cited territorial precedents. Griffith introduced the End Birthright Citizenship for Territories Act sixteen days later. Ralph Norman joined as the sole cosponsor on July 21.
H.R. 9724 requires every child born in the four territories to have a citizen or lawful permanent resident parent. Congress omitted American Samoa because its residents are nationals, not citizens. House clerks sent the bill to the Judiciary and Natural Resources committees. Delegate Stacey Plaskett counts nearly four million Americans across five territories. That total includes 3.5 million people in the four covered jurisdictions.
Territorial residents cannot cast voting ballots in the House on laws determining their citizenship. Congress still determines citizenship rules for the territories. Sections 1402, 1406, and 1407 grant citizenship in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Guam. Congress granted Northern Mariana Islands citizenship through the 1976 Covenant, which Griffith would amend.
Griffith says birth tourism is the bill’s only purpose. He told a Virginia broadcaster that Chinese parents secure citizenship for children raised in China. He called them “Chinese people but with U.S. citizenship.” He warned that they could seek the presidency in thirty-five years.
Northern Mariana reporters counted fewer than 10 foreign visitor births in 2009 and 581 in 2018. Commonwealth Healthcare Corporation staff counted 47 in 2025, 92 percent below the peak. Delegate Kimberlyn King-Hinds credits federal screening and local enforcement. Resident and non-resident births now outnumber tourist births by nine to one.
Griffith cited evidence only from the Northern Mariana Islands. On WTJX, he admitted having no concrete evidence from the U.S. Virgin Islands. H.R. 9724 exempts no resident births, so the measure covers every birth across four territories.
Between 1901 and 1922, the Supreme Court limited constitutional protections in unincorporated territories through the Insular Cases. In United States v. Vaello Madero, decided on April 21, 2022, Neil Gorsuch condemned the earlier justices’ racial stereotypes. He criticized the decisions’ foundations and consequences. Gorsuch urged the Court to overrule them.
Eight justices joined Kavanaugh’s majority, leaving the Insular Cases in force. In Barbara, Roberts called citizenship the “right to have rights.” Earl Warren used the same phrase in his 1958 Perez v. Brownell dissent. Warren argued that Congress could not revoke citizenship.
The Supreme Court agreed with Warren in Afroyim v. Rusk in 1967. The justices protected citizenship received at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment. Griffith’s bill applies to citizenship granted by federal law. Neil Weare of Right to Democracy says the text places no limits on Congress.
In 1933, Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick made German citizenship revocable. Hannah Arendt remained stateless for eighteen years. She wrote that “complete rightlessness was created before the right to live was challenged.” Weare warns that territorial children born after 2027 could become “citizens of nowhere.” Arendt used similar language after studying how governments stripped people of nationality.
Frick signed the Law on the Revocation of Naturalizations on July 14, 1933. The law revoked every naturalization granted between November 9, 1918, and January 30, 1933. Roughly 16,000 Eastern European Jews had naturalized during that period. Ministry officials identified them as the principal target. Frick also allowed officials to strip nationality from emigrants they considered disloyal.
Interior Ministry officials first used that power against political exiles. German officials revoked Albert Einstein’s nationality on March 24, 1934. Hermann Göring read the Reich Citizenship Law at Nuremberg on September 15, 1935.
The Nazi regime then divided Germans into two legal ranks. Reichsbürger held full political rights; Staatsangehörige lacked them. On November 14, 1935, Frick defined Jews as people with three or four Jewish grandparents. Nazi officials barred Jewish voters on January 1, 1936. Michael Hepp counted 39,006 names on lists published through 1945.
On November 25, 1941, Frick signed the Eleventh Decree, the fourth measure. One clause combined denaturalization with asset seizure. Jews living abroad automatically lost nationality, while finance officials seized their property. Officials classified each frontier crossing as foreign residence. Deportees therefore lost nationality at the border, blocking foreign consular protests.
Tax officials required deportees to declare their property before departure. Finance officials transferred bank balances, securities, and insurance policies to the Reich Treasury. Auctioneers sold furniture and kitchenware to Germans at posted prices. Schools bought desks, while Bonn University librarians bought books.
Wolfgang Dressen published Cologne records naming the buyers. Frick’s officials classified Jewish Germans by descent and expelled them from the Volksgemeinschaft. Finance officials then collected revenue from the seized property. Richard Breitman identifies expropriation as the decree’s main purpose.
Before 1941, prosecutors seized property case by case under a 1933 statute. Berlin tax officials could not manage the growing caseload, so Frick ordered automatic forfeiture. His Twelfth Decree of April 1943 denied Jews and Roma citizenship. On July 1, 1943, Frick, Martin Bormann, and Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk signed the Thirteenth Regulation. The regulation authorized finance officials to confiscate Jewish property after the owner’s death.
On February 14, 1968, the Federal Constitutional Court voided the Eleventh Decree. The judges ruled that every deprivation was invalid from the decree’s publication date. Three years later, the U.S. Supreme Court considered Congress’s authority over statutory citizenship. On April 5, 1971, four years after Afroyim, the Court decided Rogers v. Bellei. Bellei received citizenship at birth in Italy through his American mother.
Justice Harry Blackmun denied Fourteenth Amendment protection to citizens born abroad. He upheld the residency rule that cost Bellei his American nationality. Blackmun treated statutory citizenship differently from citizenship acquired under the Fourteenth Amendment. Courts place unincorporated territories outside the Amendment’s first sentence. Territorial births consequently fall under Bellei rather than Afroyim.
Frick’s ministers ranked Germans in 1935, ordered forfeiture in 1941, and denied citizenship in 1943. Griffith would define a legal class that future lawmakers could broaden. Usie Richards, president of the Sixth Constitutional Convention, called H.R. 9724 atrocious. Richards says Congress could override protections written into a local constitution.
Trump’s allies then turned to Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Arendt warned that governments begin denationalization by separating one class of citizens from everyone else. H.R. 9724 would separate 3.5 million Americans by birthplace and give future congressional majorities a legal path to restrict or revoke their citizenship.
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Sources
H.R. 9724, End Birthright Citizenship for Territories Act, bill text released by Representative Morgan Griffith, July 16, 2026. https://morgangriffith.house.
gov/uploadedfiles/7.16.26_-_ birthrightcitizenship.pdf Amy Howe, “Supreme Court Strikes Down Trump’s Order Ending Birthright Citizenship,” SCOTUSblog, June 30, 2026. https://www.scotusblog.com/
2026/06/supreme-court-strikes- down-trumps-order-ending- birthright-citizenship/ Right to Democracy, “Federal Legislation Seeks to End Birthright Citizenship in U.S. Territories,” July 19, 2026. https://www.righttodemocracy.
us/federal_legislation_seeks_ to_end_birthright_citizenship_ in_u_s_territories Tom Eader, “WTJX Speaks with Author of End Birthright Citizenship for Territories Act; Leaders React to Bill,” WTJX Newsfeed, July 24, 2026. https://newsfeed.wtjx.org/
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