Can We Deport Vivek Ramaswamy?

January 30, 2025–Not ‘should’ we, but ‘could’ we deport Vivek Ramaswamy? Short answer: no, not as things now stand. But, as a child of H1B parents, looking at his situation can help us understand issues that are bound to arise with birthright citizenship of all types.

As to whether or not we SHOULD deport him? That’s a separate issue we’ll get to later.

On his first day in office, President Trump signed an Executive Order (EO), “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.” The Order states that “the Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States. The Fourteenth Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

It’s an idea that has been around for some time—a draft EO was circulated during Trump’s first term—and has been hotly debated in legal circles. Those on the Left have generally been in favor of a broad interpretation of the 14th Amendment, while those on the Right have focused on the magic words “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” It’s a contentious issue, but according to a recent poll more Americans support ending birthright citizenship than oppose it, 48% to 32%.

There are many, myself included, who believe the liberal argument hinges on a hopelessly incorrect interpretation of United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898). Their position is that anyone who happens to pop out of a uterus within the boundaries of the United States is automatically a citizen, period. What they get wrong (or ignore) about Wong is that both of Wong’s parents were legal, permanent immigrants at the time of his birth. They were “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

Looking at other precedents, going back to the 1866 Civil Rights Act (the language of which was condensed into the 14th Amendment), Elk v. Wilkins (1884) and the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, it’s clear that “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” was intended to refer only to the children of those who were not subject to (or owed allegiance to) a foreign power. This is why the children of foreign diplomats and their staff, among others, are not considered citizens.

Similarly, “it is just plain wrong to claim that the children, born of parents temporarily in the country as students or tourists are automatically US citizens: they do not meet the 14th amendments jurisdictional allegiance obligations. They are, in fact, subject to the political jurisdiction (and allegiance) of the country of their parents.” (Hans A. von Spakovsky, in Birthright Citizenship: A Fundamental Misunderstanding of the 14th Amendment, Oct 30, 2018, Heritage.org)

If the children of tourists and students here temporarily aren’t considered citizens, how can the children of those who are here illegally be considered to be such?

Decades of improper interpretation of the Constitution, the law and legal precedence don’t make a thing right. It has, however, given us “anchor babies” and “birth tourism” in spades. It’s difficult to make an accurate estimate of the scope of the problem, but with births to illegal immigrants being about 390,000 in 2007, 250,000 in 2016 and nearly 400,000 in 2024, it’s easily in the millions.

So how does the President’s EO affect Vivek?

Vivek’s father came to this country under the H1B program, and then brought his mother here under the same program. I’ve seen this reported in several places, but I can’t confirm it. It shouldn’t take long to verify if you have access to the INS database. Vivek’s father continues to have an Indian passport, and according to Vivek, his mother didn’t take her citizenship exam until AFTER she’d had him.

If this is true, then is Vivek an H1B anchor baby? It seems to me he may very well be.

H1B visas were never intended to be a vehicle for end-run citizenship. Their whole purpose is to allow U.S. companies to TEMPORARILY fill needed positions. In theory, the person comes here, does a job, and then goes back whence they came. They never relinquish their citizenship in their home country, and are thus not fully “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

So, can we deport Vivek? Sadly, no, because President Trump’s EO only takes effect 30 days after the signing, and isn’t retroactive. Already, some 22 Democratic Attorneys General and the ACLU have already filed suits to challenge it. No doubt Team Trump knew this would happen, and given how thoroughly they’ve prepped the rest of his initial actions, I have no doubt they’re ready to defend it.

It looks like SCOTUS will be tasked with settling this, and we can only hope they rule in line with their predecessors, including Justice Richard Posner, who wrote in Ofoji v. Ashcroft (2003):

“We should not be encouraging foreigners to come to the United States solely to enable them to confer U.S. citizenship on their future children. But the way to stop that abuse of hospitality is to remove the incentive by changing the rule on citizenship….”

And as for Vivek? While he was campaigning for President, he reportedly favored stripping citizenship from the children of illegals—the “Dreamers”—and deporting them. If we can “strip & ship” the Dreamers, why can’t we do it for the H1Bers?

Back to India, Vivek! Have fun, and watch where you step on certain streets!

As useful as it is to consider Vivek as a test case for all the other H1B anchor babies (most of which are Indian and Chinese), I don’t think we need to worry too much about deporting him. Ever since his December 26 tweet denigrating American culture (linked below), his standing with MAGA has collapsed:

“…American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.

A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.”

I haven’t seen a political career die that hard or fast since Howard Dean’s scream. As one of the opening salvos in the “MAGA Civil War,“ it very firmly put him on the side of the corporatist Tech Bros. That irritated Trump’s MAGA base, who didn’t vote for him to continue to flood the country with unlimited H1Bs to displace American jobs. While some of Vivek’s points may or may not have been correct, the overall tone was a horrible misread of the room.

Since then, he’s been noticeably missing from the limelight. He’s out at DOGE, has dropped off the national media radar, and when his name is mentioned it’s mainly been to highlight his sketchy past. He’s flip-flopped on several critical issues, notably H1Bs and TikTok. He made a huge amount of money with a Big Pharma stock pump & dump that destroyed $2 billion in shareholder value, based on one study that his mother did. Worst of all, too many people who’ve met him described him as “slick” or “smarmy.” He gave a lot of people a “snake oil salesman” vibe during the campaign that was largely overlooked because he was saying the right MAGA things, but….

The old Tea Partiers who form the core of OG MAGA have been burned before. They’re willing to give someone a chance to prove themselves, but don’t react well to betrayal. Vivek did that, and now he’s paying for it, because MAGA remembers these things.

Vivek is spinning his departure from DOGE and Trump’s inner circle as a move to focus on running for Governor of Ohio. We’ll see how that goes, but I don’t think Ohioans will be taken in by Slick Vivek in 2026. I doubt they’ll be too eager to turn Cincinnati into Calcutta on the Ohio, which Vivek would likely do. That’s not the America First, MAGA agenda we want or need.

And who knows? It looks to me like Vivek’s parents weren’t “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” when he popped out. Depending on what SCOTUS says and Congress does, Vivek may find himself sitting on the banks of the Ganges watching the garbage go by.

As always, I’ll reference this up when it’s posted to my Doc Contrarian Substack.

Read The Executive Order “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship” at https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/protecting-the-meaning-and-value-of-american-citizenship/

Read Vivek’s “Jock and Prom Queen” quote at: https://x.com/vivekgramaswamy/status/1872312139945234507?s=61&t=aYyv3kAAQ2aPqsgKFbnvZw

Dr. Bill Chitwood is a retired Child, Adolescent and Family Psychiatrist who does political consulting and media relations. He is the author of Beyond Maga, available on Amazon under his pen name, Doc Contrarian. He can be found on Substack and social media as @DocContrarian.

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