Let’s Talk About Birthright Citizenship

On Wednesday, I spoke to the Shepherds Center at North United Methodist Church. They had asked for a discussion of birthright citizenship, a status which is currently under attack by Trump (along with the rest of the Constitution). Here’s what I said. (A bit longer than usual–sorry.)

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I’ve been asked to speak about birthright citizenship, and Donald Trump’s effort to eliminate it. Let me just begin with a bit of history, and then consider what would happen if our mad and racist would-be King were to be successful.

As many of you know, in 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision in the infamous case of Dred Scott v. Sandford. The court ruled that Scott, an escaped slave who was suing for his freedom, was not a citizen because he was of African descent. According to the decision written by Chief Justice Roger Taney, no person of African descent could be a citizen, even if they had been born in the United States.

It took a civil war to change that conclusion, but in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, defining citizenship as applying to “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

The clear language of the Amendment should have foreclosed debate, but it 1898, the 14th Amendment’s definition of citizenship was challenged in a case involving a man named Wong Kim Ark.

Wong had been born on American soil in 1873; he was the son of Chinese immigrants. That was well before the U.S. passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which prohibited most Chinese immigration and, by extension, the naturalization of Chinese citizens–an Act that was one of several historical eruptions of anti-immigration hostility. Since Wong’s parents weren’t citizens, his status was considered unclear, and as a result, he was denied reentry into the U.S. after visiting China.

Wong waited on a ship in San Francisco harbor for months as his attorney pursued his case. The Department of Justice opposed him, taking the position that people of Chinese descent weren’t citizens, but when the case reached the Supreme Court, Wong won.

Justice Horace Gray wrote the majority opinion, and it’s worth quoting part of it. Gray wrote “The Fourteenth Amendment, in clear words and in manifest intent, includes the children born, within the territory of the United States, of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States. To hold that the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution excludes from citizenship the children, born in the United States, of citizens or subjects of other countries would be to deny citizenship to thousands of persons of English, Scotch, Irish, German or other European parentage who have always been considered and treated as citizens of the United States.”

That case became binding precedent and has operated to defend the birthright citizenship rights of other Americans—even including Japanese Americans during WWII—despite the shameful treatment of those citizens.

Bottom line: birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the plain language of the 14th Amendment and subsequent case law, and I doubt that even our deeply corrupt Supreme Court majority will find a way around the clarity of that language and those precedents.

But what would happen if they did—if somehow, the Court found a way to evade the plain language of both the Amendment and the Court’s own, unambiguous precedents? That question was recently examined by the Niskanen Center. The Center describes its mission as the promotion of policies that advance prosperity, opportunity, and human flourishing, guided by the belief that a free market and an effective government are mutually dependent.

I have found the research published by the Center to be both intellectually honest and uncommonly insightful—Niskanen advocates for an adequate social safety net and for the provision of essential public goods, while also supporting laws that foster market competition in areas where markets are appropriate. The Center is firmly committed to liberal democracy and an open society.

The Center’s researchers looked at the probable results of overturning birthright citizenship, and they identified three major ones:  ending birthright citizenship would erode America’s current demographic advantage over rival powers; it would endanger the advantage we have enjoyed in internal assimilation and stability; and it would introduce an unnecessary and protracted distraction from building an immigration system that could guarantee continued American prosperity.

Let’s look at each of these predictions.

We know that the world population is aging: According to U.N., the majority of the world’s population now lives in countries in which the fertility rate is below replacement level. By 2050, deaths will exceed births in more than 130 countries.

Thanks to immigration, the United States is an outlier to that demographic fact. In addition to having higher fertility rates than nearly all other developed countries, America’s “demographic exceptionalism” is tied to what has been our robust immigration. As a result, the U.S. is the only major power currently projected to maintain both population and labor force growth through the mid-century. Meanwhile, both China and Russia are experiencing population decline and are rapidly aging societies.

Ending birthright citizenship would also directly hurt American competitiveness. As Niskanen researchers point out, throwing a quarter of a million children into a position of legal uncertainty each year—which is what reversing birthright citizenship would do– would have a hugely negative effect on America’s strength and prosperity. If the children leave with their parents, which is what the architects of this inhumane policy intend, we’ll struggle to fill jobs—especially those requiring manual labor– and we’ll also struggle to fund Social Security with fewer workers.

If, instead, these children stay in the United States, they’d be treated by the legal system and by large swaths of society as foreigners in the only country they’d ever known, a situation that would challenge the domestic stability that has resulted from our history of comparatively smooth cultural assimilation. That ability to assimilate large numbers of newcomers and their descendants, to turn them into proud Americans, has been a considerable source of America’s strength and stability.

Despite the current hostility of the Trump administration and the MAGA White Supremacists who want to expel Black and Brown folks and limit immigration to White South Africans, America has had a far better history with immigrants than countries like China and Russia. America actually has had a very good track record of assimilating a wide variety of minorities, and that success has been due in large part to the ideals of American citizenship—ideals that include policies like birthright citizenship. And we need to remember that, for children of immigrant parents, birthright citizenship not only validates their American identity, but also imposes patriotic responsibilities on them. Those children haven’t just voted and served on juries—they’ve fought and died in America’s wars.

Let me just quote two of the concluding paragraphs of the Niskanen paper, describing the likely consequences of abandoning birthright citizenship.

“Many of the children born to illegal immigrants may also be temporarily rendered stateless. Some countries such as India do not automatically grant citizenship to the children of citizens born abroad. Given how politically polarizing other policies involving immigrant children, such as family separation and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), have been, artificially creating a population of potentially hundreds of thousands of stateless children living within the U.S. would become a poison pill in American politics….

The net effect of repealing birthright citizenship would be a prolonged state of chaos in our domestic politics and our immigration system. Doing so would squander key advantages we have over rivals who are gaining ground on the world stage and distract us from being able to build an immigration system that prioritizes the talent we need to remain competitive by miring us in decades of legal challenges, ambiguity, and disunity. As is often the case, those who are currently seeking to suddenly impose mass changes to the social fabric will find that the status quo has functioned well for a reason.”

A few years ago, I looked into the issue of immigration—both legal and not– for a speech to the Lafayette ACLU, and was struck with the sheer extent to which the U.S. has benefitted from it, especially when we look at innovation and economic growth.

The Partnership for a New American Economy issued a research report back in 2010 and found that more than 40% of Fortune 500 companies had been founded by immigrants or their children. Collectively, companies founded by immigrants and their children employed more than 10 million people worldwide; and the revenue they generated was greater than the GDP of every country in the world except the U.S., China and Japan.

The names of those companies are familiar to most of us: Intel, EBay, Google, Tesla, Apple, You Tube, Pay Pal, Yahoo, Nordstrom, Comcast, Proctor and Gamble, Elizabeth Arden, Huffington Post. A 2012 report found that immigrants are more than twice as likely to start a business as native-born Americans. As of 2011, one in ten Americans was employed by an immigrant-run business.

On economic grounds alone, then, we should welcome immigrants. But not only do we threaten undocumented persons, we make it incredibly difficult to come here legally. If there is one fact that everyone admits, it is the need to reform a totally dysfunctional and inhumane system. Based upon logic and the national interest, it’s hard to understand why Congress has been unwilling or unable to craft reasonable legislation. Of course, logic and the national interest have been missing from Washington for some time.

The bottom line: repealing birthright citizenship would be stupid—it would be a self-inflicted wound, making America less competitive, less stable and less prosperous. But there is also a moral imperative at stake here.

Those of you who attend these Shepherd Center events recognize what the MAGA bigots clearly do not– the moral and ethical dimensions of this effort to define anyone who isn’t a White Christian as “Other.” The basis of the MAGA movement and its support for the Trump administration is racism, misogyny and White Christian nationalism—with a hefty side helping of anti-Semitism. The effort to overturn birthright citizenship is part and parcel of that larger effort to remake America into a “blood and soil” country—a version of the Third Reich. We cannot let that happen.

Thank you.

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The Kids Are All Right

Complaining about the younger generation has been a part of human discourse since Athenians were bemoaning Socrates’  “corruption” of that city’s youth, and it has been a consistent theme ever since. Young folks these days are routinely accused of lack of seriousness, addiction to technology, and a wide variety of other behaviors considered deficits by their cranky elders.

Admittedly, when it has come to their participation in electoral politics, the criticisms have been more legitimate. And recently, evidence of the neo-Nazi tendencies of younger Republican males has been disquieting, to say the least–its hard to avoid wondering just how widespread those very unAmerican sentiments are. My own experience with young Americans over some 21 years in a college classroom was overwhelmingly positive, but as the saying goes, anecdotes are not data, so it was refreshing to come across credible data that supported my own observations.

The New Republic recently published an article headlined “The Shocking Truth About Gen Z Voters Is That They’re Pretty Great.” The subhead was “Stop panicking: They are the most progressive generation ever, especially on race. If that surprises you, you’ve been listening to the wrong story.”

The article led with acknowledgement that the reigning story is far more negative: Democratic pundits are convinced that young Americans, especially white men, are being “red-pilled,” especially on matters of race, and that their increasing bigotry jeopardizes not just racial progress but also Democratic Party gains among young people.

The data doesn’t support that gloomy conviction. As the linked article reported, Gen Z voted overwhelmingly for Zohran Mamdani in New York, and for Democrats like Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia.

These Gen Z landslides for Democrats may have been a surprise to some, but not for us. Well before the election, the data was already telling a different—and far more hopeful—story about the politics of Gen Z. In surveys from over 60,000 Americans in the 2024 Cooperative Election Study, the gold standard for political research, a clear pattern emerges: Racial resentment is collapsing among young people.

Scholars differ on the question whether “racial resentment” is equivalent to full-blown racism, although most observers would have trouble distinguishing between the two. In any event, there is broad agreement that an individual’s level of racial resentment is predictive of how that individual will vote.

In predicting who votes for or against Trump, racial resentment is one of the most powerful variables out there—more predictive than income, gender, education, geography, or attitudes about economic policy, gender, or religious traditionalism. In short, scoring high on racial resentment means you’re virtually certain to vote for Trump, whereas scoring low means you’re basically certain to vote against him. And among young Americans, racial resentment is at historic lows.

Indeed, the data shows that Gen Z has the lowest level of racial resentment of any generation ever studied.

That said, the evidence of young Republicans’ bigotry isn’t wrong. The data also shows that young Republicans “remain nearly as racially resentful as older Republicans.”  The massive shifts researchers have found are seen among Democrats and independents–and those young independents “now look more like Democrats than like older independents, or Republicans, for that matter.”

The Republican Party maintains its base through consistent racial attitudes across generations, but that base is shrinking. Meanwhile, everyone else is moving left on race. The center isn’t drifting right; young people are redefining where the center sits.

Why is there so much misunderstanding of Gen Z?

There’s motivated reasoning everywhere. Conservatives want to believe they’re winning the youth. Centrist Democrats want to believe the party needs to move right. Pessimistic progressives want to believe we’re doomed. Political consultants want a reason to sell their clients on new, expensive advertising markets. Everyone finds anecdotes that confirm their assumptions while ignoring mountains of contradictory data.

What about democratic participation? Attitudes don’t mean much without electoral turnout. Happily, the news there is equally promising. In the wake of the off-year elections, Newsweek reported on what it characterized as “a growing generational realignment: voters under 30 — who turned out in unusually high numbers — overwhelmingly backed Democratic candidates.”

Trump and MAGA have placed their bets on Americans’ continuing racism. The data shows that is a losing bet, because the kids are all right.

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It’s Murder, Not the 2d Amendment

Interestingly named Whitestown is one of several bedroom communities around Indianapolis, in central Indiana. It is 93% White. It is also the site of a recent murder–and I use that term intentionally.

The facts–at least, the readily ascertainable ones– have been widely reported. Members of a cleaning crew went to the wrong house in what has been described as a “cookie cutter” neighborhood. Two of them–a Hispanic couple–knocked on the door of that incorrect address, and in response, someone shot the woman through the door, killing her.

As of a week later, no charges had been filed by the county prosecutor, although the Indianapolis Star reports that the homeowner had hired a “Second-Amendment lawyer.” (Update: since I wrote this, the prosecutor has brought charges against the homeowner.)

The owners of the Whitestown home where a 32-year-old woman was shot and killed have hired one of Indiana’s most prominent constitutional lawyers.

Guy Relford, also known for his weekly “Gun Guy” show on WIBC, has practiced law for more than four decades. He specializes in the Second Amendment.

As the Star also reported,

The shooter — who has not been identified by law enforcement — could face criminal charges in connection with Maria Florinda Ríos Pérez’s death, pending the outcome of an ongoing review by the Boone County Prosecutor’s Office. Authorities have not confirmed whether the homeowner was the shooter.

Other than identifying the person who actually fired that gun, I cannot imagine what an “ongoing review” could uncover–and I certainly can’t imagine what defense “gun guy” will be able to offer. (Perhaps the shooter’s mental illness??)

I write these blog posts a few days ahead, so perhaps we’ll know more by the time this is published, but as I write this, it seems pretty clear that what we’ve seen in Whitestown is the merging of America’s racism and gun culture. The person inside that home saw two Hispanic people, and evidently equated “Hispanic” with “home invasion,” although I rather doubt that many home invaders knock on a home’s front door.

As the Star reported, Indiana has a Castle Doctrine law–one of those “stand your ground” statutes that give people the right to use deadly force to prevent unlawful entry into their homes. But even under those laws, the shooter’s belief of imminent danger must be “reasonable.” I find it extremely difficult to label shooting a woman knocking on one’s front door as “reasonable”–even if that woman’s skin color means she doesn’t look like a resident of Whitestown.

Of course, if far too many Americans weren’t in possession of firearms, incidents like this would be less likely. Having a gun in the house rather obviously increases the likelihood that that gun will be used–and in many cases, used inappropriately. Studies have found that 58% of gun deaths are the result of suicide, and the CDC has reported that nearly two out of every 10 non-lethal firearm injuries are unintentional–the result of accidents. (The CDC also reports that people who survive a firearm-related injury typically experience long-term problems with memory, thinking and PTSD, even if they don’t have permanent physical disabilities or paralysis.)

Maria Perez was a 32-year-old house cleaner, and the mother of four. An immigrant from Guatemala, she died in the arms of her husband when they arrived at what was definitely the wrong house–a house occupied by someone who was armed and evidently terrified of or hostile to people who looked “different.”

So here we are.

Four children no longer have a mother. A husband is left with memories of holding his dying wife in his arms. I’m sorry, but no “Castle Doctrine” can justify this; no “gun guy” can find a defense even in a Second Amendment that has been reinterpreted from its initial meaning in order to protect the gun industry and America’s gun fetishists.

There is no excuse.

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THE Question

I know, I know. I keep coming back to what has been the most confounding question of the past decade: why on earth would any sane voter cast a ballot for Donald Trump? The man is personally repulsive, obviously both ignorant and mentally ill and just as obviously totally disinterested in the job of governing.

That question arises again in the context of the Epstein files. 

One of the newsletters I read each morning is Robert Hubbell’s, and a couple of days ago, it included a paragraph that amplified the sheer incomprehensibility of Trump support. Hubbell wrote,

Trump’s presidency began with and was facilitated by a cover-up of a sex scandal involving Stormy Daniels. Trump won despite the Access Hollywood tapes in which Trump described his behavior in a way that can fairly be described as that of a sexual predator. Indeed, the E. Jean Carroll defamation case led to a finding by a civil jury that Trump likely engaged in sexual abuse of Carroll that matched his modus operandi described in the Access Hollywood tapes.

No other president of the US—past or future—would have or could survive a single one of the multiple sex scandals that Trump has endured.

Add to that absolutely accurate observation a discussion in the Contrarian of where Americans currently find ourselves as the result of the “performance” of this petulant toddler: the job market has crumbled; the affordability crisis is getting worse with health insurance costs set to skyrocket; the rich and Trump-connected are making out like bandits; and an increasingly decrepit president couldn’t care less about Americans. (In fact, he’s willing to maximize their pain).

Why in the world do approximately a third of our fellow Americans support this bloated excuse for a functioning human? I can only assume that his obvious hatred for the people they hate–those despised “others”–is enough to outweigh not only the daily evidence that he is personally corrupt and despicable, but the incredible harm he is doing to the country–very much including his supporters.

Rather obviously, this conundrum leads to a second question: will the slow-rolling but seemingly inexorable Epstein disclosures be enough to finally shatter the MAGA cult’s inexplicable worship? It’s speculative, but Bill Moreau–founder of the essential Indiana Citizen–recently reminded me that last Thursday was the 100-year “anniversary” of the conviction of the KKK’s D.C. Stephenson.

The 1925 trial of D.C. Stephenson, the powerful Grand Dragon of the Indiana Klan, followed the abduction and assault of Madge Oberholtzer, a 28-year-old state education official. Oberholtzer’s dying statement, taken days after she was attacked, led to Stephenson’s conviction for second-degree murder on November 14, 1925. Once seen as untouchable, Stephenson’s downfall sent shockwaves through state government, revealing how deeply the Klan’s influence had reached.

That reminder brought me back to Hubbell’s observation–and the uncomfortable possibility that racist citizens will no longer desert a man who is demonstrably guilty of truly heinous behaviors. Trump has already been revealed as a felon and a predator–unless someone is immersed in MAGA’s alternate reality, they can’t help but be aware of the Access Hollywood tape, the payoff to Stormy Daniels, the 26 women who have accused him of sexual assaults, and the verdict obtained by E. Jean Carroll. (Is the fact that–at least as far as we know– he hasn’t killed and mutilated any of the complainants enough, in MAGA’s eyes, to absolve him?)

It has become abundantly clear that Trump’s disastrous presidential performance– his corruption and ignorance, his pathetic, incompetent Cabinet, his frenzied efforts to rig the upcoming midterm election, his insane rantings on Truth Social–haven’t shaken the support of his rabid base, or caused the defection of the cowardly Republicans currently “serving” in the House and Senate. Thus far, neither has the abundant and clear evidence of his sexual crimes.

Will the inevitable Epstein disclosures finally do to Trump what they did to D.C. Stephenson? I guess we’re about to find out. 

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The “Welcome Nazis” Administration

It’s no longer possible for any sentient American to deny the virulent racism at the heart of MAGA and the Trump administration. The efforts to characterize DEI as “anti-White,” the dismissal of credentialed and competent Black officials and their replacement with buffoons whose only visible “credential” is White skin, the privileging of White South African immigrants…

Those well-publicized efforts have been joined by other, more covert moves to diminish recognition of the important roles played by minorities in our society–exemplified, most recently, by the removal of memorials to Black WW II soldiers in a Netherlands graveyard.

Two display panels in a cemetery in the village of Margraten commemorating African American soldiers were “quietly removed.”

The move has sparked shock in the Netherlands, with critics of the removal, including a community that cares for the graves, demanding answers about why the black American soldiers have all but vanished from displays.

MAGA’s embrace of bigotry is currently playing out more publicly in debates about Tucker Carlson’s friendly interview with “out” neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes. But even while those internal MAGA battles rage, there’s growing evidence that the Trump administration’s racism and anti-Semitism isn’t simply grist for domestic politics. It’s internationally recognized.

My oldest son recently sent me a link to a story I’d missed.

A prominent far-right German activist has applied for political asylum in the United States, citing fears for her safety, as the Trump administration has signaled plans to prioritize protections for White refugees and Europeans who claim they are being targeted for their populist views.

The activist, Naomi Seibt, is a social media influencer and supporter of the nationalist, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which German authorities have labeled extremist.

Seibt is currently living in Washington, D.C., while her application is being processed.

That application is unusual–most candidates for asylum are people fleeing war or repressive regimes. The article notes that this “rare application from a citizen of a wealthy Western democracy” is evidence of the increasingly close ties between Germany’s far right and Trump’s MAGA movement. Seibt is close to Elon Musk and to several Republican lawmakers.

Seibt met on Oct. 30 with Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Florida), who said in a statement that she is “personally assisting” with Seibt’s asylum application and making her case to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

In 2020, Seibt was the subject of a Washington Post profile highlighting her paid work for a think tank allied with the Trump administration casting doubt on the scientific consensus around climate change.

Seibt asserts that she feels unsafe in Germany, a country that has made speech that incites hatred, threatens public order or attacks human dignity illegal. She contends that police in Germany refused to act on her complaint that she had received death threats. (The German police declined to comment, noting they don’t speak about individual cases.)

The Trump administration is actively positioning itself to be a refuge for racists and neo-Nazis. According to the linked report,

The Trump administration has already granted refuge to dozens of White South Africans who claimed to be persecuted at home.

 The administration is contemplating a broader overhaul of the refugee resettlement process to prioritize such Afrikaners at the expense of groups traditionally seen as fleeing danger and persecution. A draft proposal from the State Department also would give consideration to “free speech advocates in Europe,” according to a former U.S. official who had seen the document.

The article quoted Michael Kagan, a professor of immigration law, who observed that It will be interesting to see whether Seibt’s application is scrutinized as rigorously as others, given that the status Seibt seeks is a difficult one to win.

Seibt, however, says she’s optimistic “because my beliefs strongly align with the Trump administration’s.” She’s right–and that observation should ring the alarm bells of every American who believes in human equality. Although the State Department declined to comment on Seibt’s case, a spokesperson for the department was quoted for the statement that the U.S. “supports all Europeans working to defend our common civilizational heritage.”

I’m pretty sure that MAGA’s definition of “our common civilization heritage” would be a good deal more restrictive than mine…

And there we are.

The difference between the Trump/MAGA vision of America and that held by the rest of us is the essential fault-line between today’s GOP cult of White Christian nationalists and the majority of Americans who accept (and even celebrate) the diversity of our multi-ethnic, multi-racial society.

The Trump administration wants to remake America into a fascist haven for neo-Nazis. We absolutely cannot allow that to happen.

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