jus soli
bring me your poor, etc. etc.
After the nation’s oligarchs descended on Washington for the pageantry of an inauguration open only to the elite and coterie of international far-right politicians, the Trump administration issued an unconstitutional executive order abrogating the basic right of citizenship to those born in the United States. Not satisfied with illegally ending the hundred-year precedent granting the children of undocumented immigrants citizenship, the order also deprived the children of legal immigrants, those born to students and others on temporary visas, the right to be Americans by virtue of being born in this country.
The United States guaranteed birthright citizenship at the end of the Civil War, to prevent any decision like Dred Scott, which declared that African-Americans could not be citizens, from again denying the rights of citizenship to those who have spent their whole life here. During the debates over the 14th Amendment, all participants recognized that the language therein would grant citizenship to the children of non-citizens, with some congressmen even voting against the Amendment for precisely that reason. Case after case before the Supreme Court, including Courts whose composition was far more conservative than the incumbents, have affirmed this obvious interpretation of the basic law. James C. Ho, a possible future member of the Court and a doctrinaire originalist conservative, wrote that
“History thus confirms that the Citizenship Clause applies to the children of aliens. To be sure, members of the 39th Congress may not have specifically contemplated extending birthright citizenship to the children of illegal aliens, for Congress did not generally restrict migration until well after adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. But nothing in text or history suggests that the drafters intended to draw distinctions between different categories of aliens. To the contrary, text and history confirm that the Citizenship Clause reaches all persons who are subject to U.S. jurisdiction and laws, regardless of race or alienage.”
This arch-conservative of the 5th Circuit, who Vivek Ramaswamy and Ted Cruz have both called to be nominated to the Supreme Court, went on to call a possible future decision to end birthright citizenship “Dred Scott II.” Proponents of the interpretation of the 14th Amendment that preclude citizenship to the undocumented or to temporary legal residents are lying, illiterate, or so blinded by nativism that they cannot interpret the clear letter of the law.
By unconstitutionally attempting to end birthright citizenship, the Trump administration is preparing to usher in a bureaucratic regime in which people born in the United States will be forced to go through years of paperwork and appeals to be recognized as Americans. It will deprive the United States of millions of people who could work, pay taxes, and enrich civic and cultural life. In this way of course, the Trump administration is trying to make our country like most others - a nation closed off to those who desperately want to become part of it.
An ultranationalist activist of the Zaitokukai screams into a megaphone. “Koreans are cockroaches! Get out of Japan! Throw them into Tokyo Bay!”. He is referring to the Zainichi Koreans, descendants of those brought to Japan as forced laborers when Korea was a colony of the Japanese Empire. Nearly four-hundred thousand Zainichi are not Japanese citizens, as their parents, and their parents’ parents, were not citizens. Many of them, born and raised in the country that imposed a grotesque imperial regime on the home of their ancestors, only speak Japanese. They are barred from running for office, voting, or serving as firefighters, judges, or in other public roles. The naturalization process, which is costly and often takes years, requires applicants to renounce their Korean identity. Still, many Zainichi Koreans have dedicated themselves to making a home in their birth country, and continually struggle for equal recognition under the law. In a country where they have lived all of their lives, Zainichi Koreans still have to fight tooth and nail for the basic guarantees entailed by citizenship, which they are denied at birth.
There are over a million Italians born in the country to foreign citizens, and thus deprived of citizenship. The naturalization process is infamously difficult, a bureaucratic nightmare that can only be begun at the age of eighteen. Many jobs and scholarships are restricted to citizens, creating an underclass of people who speak Italian, who are enmeshed in Italian culture and subject to the laws of the Italian state, but who have limited rights, sometimes never attaining citizenship even after decades of appeals. One Italian, Sonny, who was born in Rome, was required to submit a criminal record from the place of his parent’s birth, Nigeria. The request to submit a document that, for obvious reasons, does not exist, was just one in a long line of humiliations that Sonny has faced in his life-long march to citizenship. When interviewed by Vice, he was 34-years old.
Even though Israel recognizes an undivided Jerusalem as its capital, the Arab descendants of those who lived in East Jerusalem at the time of its occupation are not citizens. In order to become a citizen of Israel, you must be a Jew making Aliyah under the Right of Return, born in Israel to a citizen parent, or apply for naturalization with years as a permanent resident, proficiency in Hebrew, and renunciation of all other citizenship. The Ministry of the Interior can deny any application for citizenship, and often does in the case of Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, using any family ties to the West Bank, perceived sympathies with the Palestinian national movement, or even unpaid bills as reasons to deny a basic right that any Jew, anywhere in the world, can claim by virtue of their bloodline. Israel’s constitution defines it not as a country for all those who reside within its borders, but as a national home of the Jewish people.
Most countries define citizenship by ancestry, but the United States is, has been, and should be different.
Trump and his billionaire and theocrat hangers-on claim that they are renewing American greatness. Once again we will have a dynamic economy, once again leading the way in scientific progress, once again prosperous and hegemonic. We shall land on Mars! All the while, they will working to annihilate the very thing that has made the United States the greatest country in the world. While other nations turn away the talented, the hard-working, and the brave because their ancestors were not born on their soil, America has accepted them, and allowed their progeny to become Americans, not because of their blood, or their nationality, but because they were born in the promised land. How many of your ancestors were aboard the Mayflower? How many of you are citizens because your parents, or parents’ parents were born in this country?
The Golden Door has been the source of our economic growth, our scientific advancement, and our rich culture. These sycophants who deny this fact while preaching a new frontier are lying to you. Every time J.D. Vance recalls his family’s cemetery plot; he reduces this country to something provincial, pitiful, and small. My country is not like the others! It is not a nation-state patched together by medieval principalities! My country was forged by millions speaking a myriad of tongues. My country contains the world, it is far vaster than some pathetic blood and soil relic. Reactionaries may whine about our sovereignty and proclaim the resurrection of a Golden Age of America, but they want nothing more than to make us like every other country, where parochial nationalist parties obsesses over territorial claims decades old, where the economy lags and our march to the future stalls, but at least their culture is ‘pure’, unadulterated by immigration. The objective of the Trump administration is to turn our commonwealth, our unique and exceptional civic republic, our City on a Hill, into a mere Homeland. If you have even a sliver of devotion to the task of achieving this country, an ounce of patriotism - you must find yourself on the side fighting so that they do not succeed.
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