Tag: citizenship
White House

Why America Needs Birthright Citizenship

It's part of who we are.

The White House executive order theoretically ending birthright citizenship grandly proclaims its purpose as "Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship." As we've come to expect from this administration, the proposed change to American law would do the exact opposite. Also in keeping with the Trumpian model, the president's comments accompanying the signing were false. "Birthright, that's a big one," Trump frowned. "It's ridiculous. We are the only country in the world that does this with the birthright, as you know, and it's just absolutely ridiculous."

Trump frequently adds "as you know" or "as you know very well" to his reality-bending comments to rope the hearers (usually members of the press) into a kind of involuntary consent. They have no opportunity to object or protest, and so he seems to rope them into his various fantasies, such as the lie that there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election or that Ukraine hosted Hillary Clinton's CrowdStrike email server.

But, no, we don't know very well that the United States is the only country in the world that grants unconditional birthright citizenship. Not even close. According to a 2018 report by the Library of Congress, practically the entire Western Hemisphere does the same, including Canada and Mexico. Pakistan too gives citizenship to every child born within its borders, and Germany and the UK have something close — extending it to babies with one citizen or permanent resident parent.

Nor is it the case, as Trump contended in his first term, that "birth tourism" is an urgent national problem. The anti-immigration Center for Immigration Studies published a claim that 33,000 babies were born per year to women traveling to the United States just to give birth. The Niskanen Center examined their statistics and found that, while it's true that some women do scheme to have their babies here, the CIS numbers were wildly exaggerated. The true number, they reckon, was closer to 2,000.

Trump is trying to behave like an emperor. He sits at the Resolute Desk and scrawls his Sharpie across documents as if that's all there is to it. He has the effrontery to do so with the preamble "By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered ... "

The president has vast powers, but he does not have unlimited power. He cannot, with the stroke of a pen, repeal a Constitutional amendment. And the Constitution of the United States is entirely clear about birthright citizenship. The 14th Amendment prescribes that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." This was a Constitutional corrective to the infamous Dred Scott decision that had denied all rights to African Americans. The phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" was understood at the time to exclude the children of diplomats and some Native American tribes — not immigrants. This isn't some throwaway line that no one has ever challenged. In 1898, the Supreme Court ruled that a man who had been born to Chinese immigrant parents on U.S. soil could not be denied his citizenship even though in the years after his birth, Congress had passed the Chinese Exclusion Act.

As Judge John C. Coughenour, a Reagan appointee, noted last week in a ruling temporarily blocking Trump's order, "This is a blatantly unconstitutional order." He even directed some ire at Trump administration lawyers, saying, "Frankly, I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind."

The assault on birthright citizenship is more than an overzealous assault on immigration; it is part of Trump's ongoing attempt to limit membership in the American family. He rose to political prominence by calling the first Black president's citizenship into question, bullied Black lawmakers with the taunt that they should go back to where they came from and lamented that we are not attracting more immigrants from places like Norway. Not subtle.

Those who approve of Trump's approach (even if they acknowledge that he should do this via a proposed constitutional amendment instead of an absurd ukase) should reflect on what it would mean to repeal birthright citizenship. The rule that your citizenship cannot be questioned if you are born on American soil is integral to American identity.

This country is not comprised of people sharing the same ethnicity and heritage. It is not the ancestral homeland of anyone except the Native Americans. It is composed of immigrants (most voluntary, some enslaved) who made this their home. No American should feel that his Americanness is dependent upon long ancestry in the land. Trump's own mother was born abroad. Most of his children are also the children of immigrants. No, if you're born here or become a naturalized citizen, you are as American as any Mayflower descendant.

If we were to dispense with birthright citizenship, we would erode the sense of equality that Americans enjoy and replace it with tiers — legitimate citizens who can trace their ancestry back a generation or two, and interlopers.

One of the greatest strengths of this country has been our ability to assimilate immigrants and transform them from whatever they were into Americans. Birthright citizenship is a vital aspect of this process. The parents who welcome an American citizen child are tied to their child's nationality and all the more willing to contribute and participate.

As a Jewish American, I've looked countless times at my passport in gratitude that I was born in New York City and no one could contest my legitimacy. If birthright citizenship is overturned, what will the criteria for unassailable Americanness be?

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Drug Prices

Democrats Should Pick A Fight With Trump Over Drug Prices

Donald Trump is executing a shock and awe strategy, burying the public in a smoky cloud of flamboyant proposals. Some, like ending birthright citizenship, are quickly slapped down in the courts. Some, like threatening to invade Greenland, are dismissed as moronic. But all are radical enough to provide news media with easy entertainment.

The problem for Democrats is that these flashbangs distract from plans that would hit Americans, in Bill Clinton's words, "where they live." Democrats need to focus.

Start with actions to weaken Biden-era programs to restrain the prices drugmakers may charge for their products. His first day back in office, Trump canceled the Biden order to test new models for lowering drug costs.

When Trump ran for president in 2016, he promised to have Medicare negotiate drug prices. Why? It was a very popular idea. Upon election, the vow promptly vanished. Trump named Alex Azar, a top executive at Eli Lilly, to head Health and Human Services. (Under Azar, Eli Lilly tripled the price of its top-selling insulin drug.)

But Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act did follow through. As a result, 10 popular drugs covered under Medicare Part D (the prescription drug benefit) were selected for price reductions by 2026. They include such popular medications as Jardiance (diabetes), Enbrel (rheumatoid arthritis) and Eliquis (blood clots).

In its last days, the Biden administration targeted another 15 Part D drugs for price negotiations. They include Trelegy Ellipta (asthma, COPD) and three big-name drugs for weight loss, diabetes and heart disease: Rybelsus, Ozempic and Wegovy. These negotiations would have to be implemented by the Trump administration. Don't bet the farm on much relief.

Novo Nordisk, maker of Ozempic and Wegovy, has been charging Americans outlandish prices for these blockbusters. Wegovy's list price in the U.S. is over $1,300 for a month's supply. It is five times the price in Canada ($265) and 14 times the price in Britain ($92).

The right-wing argues, as Project 2025 puts it, that government negotiations on Medicare drugs amount to "price controls" that will reduce patient access to new medication. That's news to the citizens of just about every other advanced country. And no, other countries don't let drugmakers charge their people whatever they want.

In Novo Nordisk's home country of Denmark, Wegovy costs only $186 a month. It should surprise no one that 72% of the company's sales come from the United States. We are the land of suckers.

Thanks to Biden, the catastrophic coverage tier for Part D begins when a beneficiary's out-of-pocket spending reaches $2,000. Project 2025 calls for "eliminating the coverage gap in Part D, reducing the government share in the catastrophic tier, and requiring manufacturers to bear a larger share." (You may laugh at the "requiring manufacturers" part.)

It's true that Trump has yet to reverse the caps already in place on seniors' drug costs, and so beneficiaries won't notice much change right off. He's certainly too clever to mess with the $35 limit on the monthly price of insulin, one of Biden's marquee achievements. Doing so might break through the smoke.

However, Project 2025 has its own ideas, and Trump is stocking his administration with Project 2025 folk. Furthermore, as Republicans comb through the budget for ways to pay for tax cuts, Medicare would seem a ripe place to slash spending. Trump did vow to leave Medicare alone. Then again, he vowed to have Medicare negotiate drug prices.

Why would Trump be OK with forcing Americans to pay more than the rest of the world for their drugs? The answer is simple: Because the drug companies want them to.

Democrats, step around some of those rabbit-hole distractions. You have an issue.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Donald Trump

Trashing Constitution, Trump Says He'll Order End To Birthright Citizenship

After running on a promise to end birthright citizenship, a victorious Donald Trump says he is planning on ending it on day one of his presidency. It’s a tall order given that the text of the 14th Amendment explicitly guarantees it to all people born on U.S. soil, but everyone knows Trump isn’t remotely interested in whether something is unconstitutional.

To anyone not enraptured by a racist fantasy of deporting millions of people, the first sentence of the 14th Amendment is extremely clear: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” If you were born here, regardless of your parents' citizenship status, you’re a citizen.

It’s a practice Trump hates and one he repeatedly lies about, claiming only America has it. That’s been repeatedly debunked, as some three dozen other countries bestow it, including Canada and Mexico. However, even if we were the only country with it, that wouldn’t negate its constitutionality, necessity, or importance.

The 14th was among the Reconstruction Amendments enacted after the Civil War. It guaranteed citizenship to formerly enslaved people, overturning the shameful Dred Scott decision from 1857. In that notorious ruling, the Supreme Court held that a “free Negro” whose ancestors had been brought to this country and then sold into slavery was not a citizen of the United States.

Granting citizenship to formerly enslaved people wasn’t just the right thing to do—it was a necessity in order for the country to move on in unison after the Civil War. Otherwise, former slaveholding states would have remained able to define “citizen” in such a way that would exclude Black people.

The issue these days, of course, is whether that guarantee was limited to the descendants of formerly enslaved people or includes anyone born here, regardless of parentage. For years, lawyer John Eastman has been pushing the idea that the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” means that the 14th Amendment was not intended to grant automatic citizenship to children of noncitizens because those noncitizens were not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.

This thought process led Eastman to declare that Vice President Kamala Harris may not be a citizen if her parents were only here with temporary permission under student visas. These days, Eastman is better known as a vociferous proponent of the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen. He is also one of the architects of the fake elector scheme, for which he now faces criminal charges in Arizona and Georgia and disbarment in California. Yeah, that’s definitely the person you want determining who gets to be a citizen.

Trump is currently running around saying that he can end birthright citizenship via an executive order, a stance he’s pushed since 2018. Anyone who made it through high school civics probably knows that an executive order can’t overrule the Constitution, making that plan a bit dicey. Even getting the incoming GOP-led House and Senate to sign on to a bill doesn’t change the Constitution: That takes 38 of the 50 states ratifying an amendment.

Another problem Trump faces is that the Supreme Court already ruled over 100 years ago that a child born to Chinese citizens residing in the country at the time of his birth was a citizen. Given the current makeup of the Supreme Court, though, who knows whether that long-standing precedent would hold any sway. It’s easy to imagine the conservative majority buying Fifth Circuit Judge James C. Ho’s brand new argument that undocumented people should be considered “invading aliens” and that birthright citizenship “obviously doesn’t apply in case of war or invasion.”

There’s no precedent or support for this idea; it’s basically something Ho made up out of whole cloth after Trump won the election last month. Ho had previously been an enthusiastic supporter of birthright citizenship, but now that he’s perpetually auditioning for a future Supreme Court seat, he had to figure out a way to align himself with Trump.

None of this means anyone should rest easy and assume the dismantling of birthright citizenship won’t come to some degree of fruition. Eternally ghoulish Trump adviser Stephen Miller has proposed refusing to issue citizenship documents such as passports and social security numbers to children born here but whose parents are not citizens. On “Meet the Press” last Sunday, Trump went a step further and said he’d just deport children who are citizens along with their undocumented parents because “I don’t want to be breaking up families.”

Speaking of families, Trump critics have pointed out that his children Don Jr., Eric, Ivanka, and Barron were all born to mothers who were not citizens at the time of their births and speculated that Trump’s proposal to end birthright citizenship would apply to them. That’s a nope, because Trump’s plan would still grant birthright citizenship to children when one of two parents is a citizen. How convenient.

Trump has promised to end birthright citizenship on his first day in office, which likely means the effort will be as chaotic as the Muslim travel ban he threw together a few days after his inauguration in 2017 and was ultimately struck down by the courts. The law will likely catch up with him again, but not before he does some serious damage.

Xenophobia is Trump’s most deeply held principle, and he’ll do anything to indulge it—no matter the consequences.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Texas May Become Center Stage For Trump's Mass Deportation Drama

Texas May Become Center Stage For Trump's Mass Deportation Drama

For more than a year, Donald Trump has pledged a vast immigration crackdown that includes ending birthright citizenship, reviving border policies from his first time in office, and deporting millions of people through raids and detainment camps.

Perhaps no state is in a better position to help him than Texas. And no state might feel the impacts of such initiatives as much as Texas.

About 11 percent of immigrants in the United States—five million—live in Texas. The state is home to an estimated 1.6 million undocumented persons—the second-most in the country after California. It is also led by Republican elected officials who are politically in lockstep with Trump.

When Trump left office in 2021, Gov. Greg Abbott surged resources to the state’s 1,254-mile border with Mexico through a border security mission, Operation Lone Star, that has so far cost $11 billion in state money. It includes the deployment of thousands of Department of Public Safety troopers and Texas National Guard troops to patrol the border. He started building a state-funded border wall after Biden ended Trump’s wall project. He sent busloads of newly-arrived migrants from border towns to northern cities led by Democrats.

Those state police and Texas soldiers could help Trump achieve his marquee campaign promise of launching mass deportations, according to immigration lawyers.

“We are in uncharted territory,” said Cesar Espinosa, the executive director of FIEL, an organization that offers education, social and legal services to immigrant families in the Houston region—home to about half a million people who are living in the country illegally.

FIEL—a Spanish acronym for Familias Inmigrantes y Estudiantes en la Lucha, which translates to Immigrant Families and Students in the Fight—tells their clients to prepare for “anything that can happen,” Espinosa said.

“We tell people that this is kind of like having a plan for a fire: You don't know if a fire is gonna happen, you can't predict when a fire’s happening, but you have a plan on how to exit,”Espinosa said.

On the campaign trail, Trump has called for a variety of measures that would significantly change immigration, asylum, and the lives of immigrants.

He’s said he will try to end automatic citizenship for children born to immigrants in the country. He’s suggested he would revoke legal status protections that the Biden administration has given to people from specific countries, like Haiti and Venezuela. He’s said he would re-implement policies from his first term, like ones that banned people from Muslim-majority countries and required asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico for the duration of their asylum cases.

But no proposal has received as much attention—or support from his fans—as Trump’s pitch to deport as many as 20 million people he’s said are undocumented. It is unclear how many undocumented people are in the country.

The last time the U.S. government undertook such a massive effort was in the 1950s during the Eisenhower administration, whose plan of pairing federal authorities with local police Trump has pointed to as a model for his ambitions.

“When there are state-level law enforcement officers and policymakers who support those initiatives, we might see an immigration enforcement authority that is far larger than Immigration and Customs Enforcement alone,” said Elora Mukherjee, director of Columbia Law School’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic.

Texas, having deployed police and military for immigration enforcement on its own accord, fits the bill better than any state. While the Biden administration tried checking Texas’ authority—most notably suing to stop a new law that would let state police arrest suspected undocumented persons for illegal entry into the country—Trump has signaled he is eager to work with the state.

“When I’m president, instead of trying to send Texas a restraining order, I will send them reinforcements,” Trump told a crowd in Las Vegas in January. “Instead of fighting border states, I will use every resource tool and authority of the U.S. president to defend the United States of America from this horrible invasion that is taking place right now.”

Immigration lawyers say for Trump to accomplish his deportation promises, he could also rely on existing law enforcement agreements between federal and local authorities while expanding the use of “expedited removal,” a fast-track removal process that does not involve a person having to go before an immigration court.

Plus, he’s inheriting a ramping up of the nation’s deportation system that happened in the final year of Biden’s administration, said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, an analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.

From May 2023 through March 2024 alone, the Biden administration processed more migrants through expedited removal—316,000—than in any prior full fiscal year, according to a paper Bush-Joseph co-authored. The administration is on track to deport more people than Trump’s administration did in its first four years.

“My guess—I think it's a rational guess—is that there is going to be a lot of cooperation and synthesis between the state of Texas and the federal government,” said Joshua Treviño of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank in Austin. “I don't think that Texas is gonna say, ‘Okay, it's done. I'm gonna wrap up Operation Lone Star.”

Abbott’s office did not respond to an interview request. He’s previously said the state will continue its border clampdown until there is a president in the White House who enforces immigration law. He’s also said the state won't stop its efforts until it has control of the border.

“The people who are in charge of bringing people across the border illegally are the drug cartels. The drug cartels haven’t closed out business, they haven’t gone away,” Abbott said in May in Eagle Pass. “We cannot relent in our security of the border.”

On Wednesday, Abbott told reporters that Trump will need time to bolster federal immigration enforcement and implement his border reforms, during which Texas must serve as a “stopgap.” He added that Texas “will have the opportunity to consider” repurposing Operation Lone Star money once Trump’s policies are in place.

Trump’s promised policies have the potential to upend the lives of millions in the state—as well as some big industries that rely on immigrant and migrant labor.

Immigrants account for roughly 18 percent of Texas’ population, but make up 40 percent of all employees in construction and a significant portion of workers in the oil and gas and mining industries, according to research papers published in September by the American Immigration Council, a Washington, D.C., group that advocates for immigrants.

“The impact that it could have on Texas could be monumental,” said Espinosa, of FIEL in Houston. “This could devastate a lot of industries here in Texas.”

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

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