The Promise Kept … Birthrights
Birthright Citizenship, the Sojourner, and the Dream I Almost Didn't Believe Was Mine
I need to testify about something today.
Today, the Supreme Court upheld what I have carried in my spirit since the day I left everything I knew behind: that a baby born on American soil is an American. Full stop. Not a maybe. Not a “we’ll see.” Not an asterisk hanging over a child’s head because of the road their parents had to walk to get here. American. Full stop.
In a 6-3 decision in Trump v. Barbara, the Court struck down an executive order that tried to end automatic citizenship for children born here to parents who were undocumented or only passing through. And in doing so, the Court simply confirmed what has already been true for over 160 years — since the Fourteenth Amendment was written into the bones of this Constitution after a war that nearly tore this nation apart. Citizenship by birth on this soil is not a favor. It is not a privilege handed out based on how well-behaved your parents’ paperwork was. It is a right. Guaranteed.
But I’m not writing today as somebody who read the ruling on the news. I’m writing as somebody who lived the before.
What I Gave Up
I gave up everything I knew to come to America in 1991.
My home in South Africa. My native language. The comfort of knowing exactly how tomorrow would go. I traded all of it, willingly, eyes wide open, to chase something I could only have dreamed about as a child. Not because it was easy. It was not easy. But because down in my spirit there was a conviction I could not shake: that a better future was possible, and that I was going to be the one to pay the price for it.
I didn’t sacrifice for myself. I sacrificed so my children — and the children who would come after me — could inherit that future without having to fight for what should have simply been theirs to begin with.
Today, that promise was kept.
Church, We Cannot Forget the Sojourner
Now let me take you to the Word, because the Bible will not let us off the hook on this one.
“You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 22:21)
Do you hear that? God doesn’t just say “be nice to the stranger.” He says remember. Remember what it felt like to be the outsider. Remember what it felt like to not know if the land you landed in was going to receive you or reject you. That memory was never given to us to make us bitter. It was given to us to make us tender.
Tender toward the next family who shows up with nothing but hope and a backpack.
Tender toward the mother giving birth far from everything familiar, praying that this new land, El Norte, will be good to her child the way it wasn’t always good to her.
This is the heart behind birthright citizenship. And I’ll tell you plainly, this is the heart behind every bit of ministry I get to do. Every family I walk alongside who is building something out of nothing, doing it on faith, doing it because somebody has to believe it’s possible.
Order and Grace Were Never Enemies
Now hear me, I am not saying borders don’t matter. They do. Law matters. A nation with no order is not a nation, it’s chaos wearing a flag.
But I refuse to accept that order and compassion have to be enemies. We can want a secure, well-run border AND a nation that opens its arms to the stranger. We can hold the law in one hand and Exodus 22:21 in the other, and those two hands do not have to close into fists against each other. They were never meant to.
That’s the tension I choose to live in. Not naive. Not soft-headed. Faithful to justice AND to mercy. Because Scripture demands both. And so, if we’re honest, does a healthy country like ours.
To Every Family Still Walking This Road
If you left it all behind so your kids could dream bigger than you were ever allowed to dream, I need you to hear me today: it was not in vain. It was not for nothing. Your children belong here. Full stop.
And to my church family, to my ministry family, to everybody doing the quiet, unglamorous work of loving your neighbor, may we be the kind of people who remember. May we look at the sojourner and see not a threat, but a mirror, a reflection of who we used to be, and who we are still called to become.
The slate is wiped clean for every child born here. Not because of where their parents came from. Not because of how they got here. But because that is who we, at our very best..
That is the America worth believing in. That is the promise worth keeping.
Brent Morris
Executive Director
June 30, 2026
🇺🇸 🙏 #BirthrightCitizenship #LoveThyNeighbor #14thAmendment #LoveTheSojourner
