For generations, people who lived and worked in the United States assumed that if they had a child there, that child would be entitled to citizenship, which comes with official documents and a state ID card.

That could soon change.

announced US President Donald Trump executive order on his first day in office that stunned immigration observers with its scope.

all as expected to try to end birthright citizenship for the children of people who entered the US illegally, overturning more than 125 years of accepted constitutional law. But then he went a big step further. As currently written, its command refers to millions more people working legally inside the US non-immigrant work visas — including many Canadians — pushing additional families into legal limbo. Only children of at least one permanent resident will be spared.

“It’s unprecedented,” said Angela Maria Kelley, senior counsel for the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

“This would be a historical reversal of our national identity. And just the basic principle that if you were born here, you belong here. And that your parents’ past is not your future.”

The order is not retroactive — it only applies to future births, starting next month. And that will be challenged in court, he is already facing multiple lawsuits.

In the meantime, that means uncertainty for people and what could be a years-long, epic legal battle all the way to the US Supreme Court.

The current order appears to deny citizenship documents to a wide range of children, from those tech workers on temporary visas to longtime employees of international institutions like the United Nations.

It says no US official may issue or accept citizenship documents for the child of a mother with legal but temporary status, such as a work, student or tourist visa, when the father is neither a citizen nor a permanent resident.

Challenging 125 years of law

Trump knows legal challenges are coming. He confirmed this by signing the order in the Oval Office on Monday night.

“That’s good. Birthright. That’s big,” Trump said, speaking to reporters as he signed a series of executive orders.

He expressed his belief that he has a legal basis for this. But he also seemed unaware of the most basic facts of the case.

Trump said the US is the only country with birthright citizenship: “It’s absolutely ridiculous.”

But citizenship is granted as a birthright by dozens of countries around the world, such as the vast majority of America — including Canada.

Others have it with conditions, and some have none at all, including much of southern and eastern Europe, northern Africa, and Asia. The change will make things especially complicated, Kelley said, for people who have a child in the U.S. if their home country doesn’t recognize an extraterritorial birth.

This would put their children at risk of becoming stateless, she said. Pregnant women living in the USA should study not only the American law, but also the law in their own country, and decide where to give birth.

Who is in danger

Lawsuits immediately filed against the order cited some of the potential impacts on people, including one suit from more than 20 blue states.

An untold number will be stateless, the lawsuit says – unable to get everything from driver’s licenses to social security numbers and legal work opportunities.

“All will be deported, and many will be left stateless,” the lawsuit says.

“The result will be a multi-generational class of marginalized families, who with each generation become increasingly detached from any country but the United States, and yet will forever remain outsiders.”

More answer carried testimonies of affected people. It was filed by groups from the Indonesian and Latin American communities in the US District Court in New Hampshire.

One couple came to the US on a tourist visa in 2023, it said, and applied for asylum; they have a baby in a month.

Another woman has lived in the US for over 20 years; she was brought illegally as a child, and now she is in the so-called A program for dreamers. She has a baby in March.

They are among several anecdotes mentioned in the suit of people without official documents, who keep their identities secret.

The backstory begins with the Civil War

Their case may now hinge on the interpretation of the 157-year-old constitutional amendment.

Written after slavery, 14th amendment he denied the Dred Scott case, the racist ruling of the US Supreme Court declaring that the descendants of African-American slaves could not be citizens.

The 1868 amendment clarified that US citizenship belongs to all those born in the United States and “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

The current fight hinges on that last quoted part.

Historically, it has been interpreted to mean almost anyone born in the US except those certain children categories of diplomatsenjoying full diplomatic immunity.

But Trump’s allies dispute the most significant case on the issue, involving the US-born son of Chinese immigrants.

Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1873. Twenty-two years later, he visited his parents’ homeland, China, and was denied re-entry to the US on the grounds that he was not a citizen.

And he was not entitled to citizenship because anti-Chinese law at that time.

He fought his case all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1898, that court ruled6-2, that Wong was actually American.

The ruling didn’t just point to the 14th Amendment; it also made it clear that the members of Congress who drafted the amendment were aware that it could apply not only to former slaves, but also to immigrants.

A minority of judges criticized the decision at the time, and of then, some have called it a selective interpretation of the drafters’ intent.

Critics insist the amendment was never intended to be so widely applied. And after 127 years, opponents of the decision got the president to try to challenge it.

“The privilege of United States citizenship is a priceless and meaningful gift,” read the opening words of Trump’s executive order, while going on to lay out new categories of people who are now ineligible for it.