The Right to Migrate / Fascism
Posted: 08 Jul 2023, 15:50
+JMJ+
Title: Why Republicans Keep Calling for the End of Birthright Citizenship [Explainer, Opinion]
Source: The Atlantic
Link: theatlantic DOT com/ideas/archive/2023/07/birthright-citizenship-trump-desantis-2024/674583/
The Money-Quote:
Title: Why Republicans Keep Calling for the End of Birthright Citizenship [Explainer, Opinion]
Source: The Atlantic
Link: theatlantic DOT com/ideas/archive/2023/07/birthright-citizenship-trump-desantis-2024/674583/
The Money-Quote:
When Trump first promised to undo birthright, I was primarily concerned about how immigrants and their U.S.-born children would be harmed by such a change. Today, this worry still figures importantly in my mind, but my concerns have grown broader. Calls to undo birthright, though couched in terms of immigration reform, ultimately aim to undo a key precept of our democracy: equitable access to citizenship. Birthright sets an even bar when it comes to being a citizen — all those born here are subject to the same threshold test, no matter whom they descended from. It ensures that, for those born in the United States, citizenship will not be conferred depending on their politics, race, faith, culture, gender, or sexuality. Birthright safeguards those born here from political leaders who would mete out citizenship as a reward or withhold it as a punishment.
The wielding of citizenship as a weapon is precisely what the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to prevent. In 1868, birthright undid the Dred Scott decision. It ensured that the right of Black Americans to belong to this nation was neither open to debate nor susceptible to shifting political whims. Since its ratification, the Fourteenth Amendment has guaranteed the belonging of some of the most vulnerable among us, including generations of children born to immigrant parents. It has protected marginalized, despised, and unpopular people who, when born here, do not need to fear exile or banishment. Birthright citizenship has always been a solution rather than a problem, and our democracy depends on it remaining just that.