Coming to the U.S. for a better life

Birthright citizenship secured my family’s American dream. No wonder President Trump and his lackeys can’t stand it.

- GUSTAVO ARELLANO

OLGA URBINA and her son Ares Webster at a 2025 protest outside the Supreme Court over the president's move to end birthright citizenship.

(DREW ANGERER AFP/Getty Images)

I’m the beneficiary of birthright citizenship three times over. My maternal grandmother, Marcela Fernández, was born in 1914 in an Arizona copper town to parents who fled the Mexican Revolution before returning to their mountain pueblo in Zacatecas. She relocated to the country of her birth in the early 1960s with my grandfather, José Miranda, after frost and drought ruined the family farm in their hometown of El Cargadero.

My Mama Chela’s U.S. citizenship allowed all her children to come here legally. One of them was my mother, María de la Luz. As a permanent resident, Mami could easily travel back and forth between Anaheim and El Cargadero when others had to wait for years for visas or come into el Norte without papers.

One of them was my father, Lorenzo Arellano.

When my parents married in 1977, my mother legalized his status. They became U.S. citizens in the mid-1990s, joining my three siblings and me — all born in los Estados Unidos -as Americans in the eyes of the law.

For my family, having kids who were U.S. citizens by birth was never about exploiting loopholes or taking advantage of taxpayers.

It’s what naturally happens when immigrants seek a better life. It gave multiple generations the assurance that we couldn't easily be deported, unlike others we knew who didn’t have the good fortune to be born here.

That security allowed us to do everything immigrants and their children are supposed to do: buy homes, build careers, contribute to civic life and love this country. I've never once taken it for granted, especially as friends and family members have lived for decades in a terrible limbo over their legal status.