COMMENTARY Trump's lying and/or ignorant quest to kill birthright citizenship trashes the New World ideal — and his movement's supposed exaltation of the little guy standing up to elites.
We know Donald Trump’s anti-establishment schtick makes it acceptable — a juvenile badge of honor — to lie about facts or be ignorant of them.
Or both. And both were on display last weekend when the former president and now President-elect-again said he’ll eliminate birthright citizenship in the U.S. via executive action.
“We have to end it, it’s ridiculous,” he told NBC’s Meet the Press. “We’re the only country that has it, you know.”
Like most of what comes out of Trump’s MAGA mouth, that’s patently false. In fact, 35 countries have unrestricted birthright citizenship on their books — meaning, anyone born on their soil is automatically a citizen.
READ MORE: Real Christians show up in Colombia — and show up racist Christianists in America
But here’s what makes Trump’s lie and/or ignorance doubly dumb when you consider his movement is supposedly all about the little guy sticking it to elitists:
Thirty of those 35 birthright citizenship nations are located in the western hemisphere.
In the Americas.
In the New World.
And that’s no coincidence.
Birthright citizenship — known as jus soli, or “right of soil” — isn’t just an entitlement enshrined in the 14th Amendment of the U.S Constitution or in the charters of countries from Canada to the Caribbean to Chile. It’s a statement of the New World ethos — of a humane egalitarianism that was meant to distinguish the Americas, especially America, from the musty caste systems of the Old World.
It was admittedly spawned by the need to populate New World colonies, which made more welcome immigration policies a common standard across the hemisphere. But it reflects the democratic idea that common folks are, or ought to be, as valued as aristocrats are in Europe.
Birthright citizenship is a statement of the egalitarianism meant to distinguish the Americas, especially America, from the caste systems of the Old World.
By telling anyone born on your turf that they’re citizens from womb to tomb, you’re affirming that notion. You’re telling even the humblest among us that as long as they work hard and follow the law, they’re as important as billionaire Elon Musk keeps telling us (over and over) that he is.
That’s why you’ll find birthright citizenship in the 14th Amendment. The post-Civil War provision conferred U.S. citizenship on former slaves. It also drove home that the U.S. was finally getting serious about the ideal etched in its Declaration of Independence — that anyone of any race, creed or class is worthy of U.S. citizenship, especially those who claim jus soli.
Refugee rank
Even Colombia, one of only five countries in the Americas without unrestricted birthright citizenship, has made exceptions for it.
Five years ago, then President Iván Duque, a conservative, granted citizenship to 25,000 babies born in Colombia to desperate migrants fleeing disaster and dictatorship in Venezuela. The legal intent was to ensure those children don’t grow up stateless; the loftier aim was to reassert the New World conviction that even babies of refugee rank deserve that consideration.
As I wrote at the time, Duque’s dictum also evoked King Herod — in this case socialist Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro — driving the infant Jesus into sanctuary in Egypt. And, especially in December, that shouldn’t be lost on all the conservative U.S. Christians who make up so much of Trump’s xenophobic base.
But! those Christians will insist, the U.S. today is mired in an immigration crisis — and Trump is right to deprive undocumented migrants of the opportunity to have “anchor babies” so they can underhandedly embed themselves in our country.
Yes, some undocumented migrants game the system that way. But Trump can still deport those parents, even if he can’t legally expel their jus soli successors.
Either way, the anchor baby phenomenon is hardly widespread enough to warrant tearing down one of America’s most bedrock constitutional principles — especially since the U.S. has its own Colombia-style dilemmas to deal with, like the plight of stateless Nicaraguan refugees.
Left-wing Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega delights in stripping exiles of their citizenship. That’s especially true of the political prisoners he’s sent to the U.S. If those freedom fighters bear children here, should we really leave those tots without a country to belong to?
Fortunately, the 14th Amendment stands in Trump's way, and repealing it is highly unlikely. Still, it’s worth reminding him and his devotees that his take on birthright citizenship isn’t just a lie and/or ignorant.
Given what this hemisphere — and his own political project — are supposed to stand for, it’s also ridiculous.
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