On Reading Statutes

One issue if and when the Court reaches the merits on birthright citizenship is the instability created by leaving that determination to executive discretion. Suppose that the Court upholds the current Executive Order. A future President can rescind or modify that order. This means that citizenship will become uncertain for a lot of people and will oscillate depending on who wins the White House. It's antithetical to the idea that citizenship is permanent unless relinquished by the citizen.

But if the citizenship statute is read as codifying the traditional understanding of birth citizenship as applying to the children born here to temporary visitors and people who are here illegally, then presidents lack the power to change this on their own. The 1952 Immigration law copied the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause without explanation. You could read it to support or reject the Executive Order. Reading the statute to reject the Executive Order would avoid a constitutional difficulty and the citizenship instability problem.