The US Supreme Court’s recent decision to uphold birthright citizenship has come as a relief to thousands of Indian families, even though the political battle over who is entitled to become an American is far from over.
When the top court’s decision came on June 30, Rajesh and Neha, an Indian couple living in Seattle, read the news over breakfast before leaving for work.
Rajesh, a software engineer, moved to the US from the southern Indian city of Bengaluru in 2016 on an H-1B visa. Neha joined them after a year. Their six-year-old daughter, Anya, was born in the United States.
“It was a relief,” Neha told DW. “For months, we wondered whether something so basic could really change.”
His daughter remains a US citizen. But for his parents, nothing else has changed. Like thousands of Indian professionals in the US, he is still waiting for an employment-based green card after standing in line for years.
Rajesh said, “We are happy that our daughter’s future is secure.” “But we are still taking the visa renewal process one at a time.”
a sigh of relief
In late June the US Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship, ruling that children born on US soil remain citizens regardless of their parents’ immigration status.
US President Donald Trump signed an executive order last year stating that children born in the United States illegally or to parents on a temporary visa will not automatically become US citizens.
That order is now blocked and subject to legal challenge.
“This decision is a profound affirmation of who belongs in America,” said Chintan Patel, executive director of Indian American Impact, a civic and political advocacy organization.
“Indian and South Asian immigrant families are most directly at risk as communities grapple with Trump’s executive order, long visa backlogs, and uncertain immigration timelines, with children often born here long before their parents have a clear path to permanency,” Patel said in a statement.
According to a May 2025 Pew Research Center fact sheet, Indians are the second largest Asian-origin group in the US after Chinese Americans.
About 5.2 million people of Indian origin lived in the US in 2023, accounting for about 21% of the country’s Asian-origin population.
Indians are the largest recipients of H-1B visas, a program that lets US companies hire skilled foreign workers. They face the longest waits for employment-based green cards because of the per-country limit.
Community organizations estimate that hundreds of thousands of children are born in the US to Indian parents on temporary work visas.
The court’s decision now preserves his citizenship as well as the rights that come with it, including a U.S. passport and Social Security number.
life in immigration limbo
For many Indian professionals, the decision addresses only one part of a much larger problem.
Employment-based green cards are subject to annual country quotas, creating a huge backlog for Indian applicants. Various estimates suggest that more than one million Indians are waiting for permanent residence, some of them for decades.
Employees hesitate to change employers for fear of their situation worsening. Spouse may face restrictions on employment.
Children who arrived as dependents may lose their legal status when they turn 21 if their parents have not yet obtained permanent residence, a problem known as aging out.
Against that backdrop, birthright citizenship remains one of the few certain families that can be relied upon.
“This decision reinforces the long-standing constitutional principle that anyone born in the United States is a citizen, regardless of their parents’ immigration status,” Rajkrishna S. Iyer, a US immigration lawyer specializing in employment and family-based immigration, told DW.
“For Indian H-1B families, this means their children will continue to receive US citizenship at birth.”
political fault line
The decision brings one of the most divisive questions in American politics back into focus.
For years, Trump and many conservatives have argued that automatic birthright citizenship encourages abuse of the immigration system.
Deliberate attempts to circumvent the current system for obtaining US citizenship is one of the concerns for conservatives and opponents of immigration.
Supporters of Trump’s position say that birthright citizenship creates incentives for what they call “birth tourism”, where foreign citizens travel to the US specifically to give birth so that their children can obtain US citizenship.
Iyer said this objection generally does not apply to H-1B visa holders.
“In particular, the conservative public has expressed comparatively little objection to legal immigrant workers having children in the US,” he noted.
According to Iyer, H-1B holders are legal workers who contribute to the tax base and are generally not viewed as a waste of public resources.
“So, the underlying objection in essence appears to be less about immigration status and more about bypassing the legal system entirely, entering the country illegally, or exploiting a legal visa for a purpose, say, birth tourism, for which it was not intended,” he said.
Immigration lawyers caution that birthright citizenship is often misunderstood.
Children born in the US cannot sponsor their parents for permanent residence until they turn 21, meaning citizenship at birth does not provide an immediate path to legal status for families.
They draw a line between rare cases of organized birth tourism and families who have been living and working legally in the US for years on employer-sponsored visas.
This difference is especially important for Indian H-1B families.
Unlike undocumented immigrants, most Indian professionals enter the United States legally, pay taxes and maintain legal status while overcoming one of the world’s longest employment-based immigration backlogs.
Karan Thukral, a New Delhi-based lawyer, said Indian professionals are being included in a debate aimed at mass undocumented immigration.
“This decision removes a huge layer of uncertainty for Indian H-1B families,” Thukral told DW.
Thukral said, “This does not change the decades-long green card wait or the reality of life on temporary visas. They are legally sanctioned professionals, and concerns about abuse should not come at the expense of the constitutional rights of U.S.-born children.”
Assurance, not solution?
The Supreme Court’s decision does not end the legal battle over birthright citizenship.
Instead, it limits the circumstances in which lower courts can block presidential policies nationwide.
Trump’s executive order will continue to face challenges in courts across the country before the constitutional question is finally resolved.
Former Indian Ambassador to the US Meera Shankar sees this decision as an assurance rather than a solution.
“This decision is a relief to many Indian families because it gives US-born children a stronger legal footing as US citizens,” he told DW.
“But under the Trump administration, the US has become much less welcoming to immigrants. This may prompt some highly skilled Indians, who once saw the US as a natural destination for their ambitions, to reconsider that option,” Shankar said.
Edited by: Srinivas Majumdaru