It's a bit like why Social Security works and Medicaid doesn't. It's simple. With birthright citizenship, everyone who is born here gets it. There's no one gatekeeping. There's no extra cost. When you try to prevent fraud, all you do is enable it by creating byzantine bureaucracies, and you prevent the people who legitimately deserve it from getting it. As soon as you start gatekeeping, that's when the fraud starts.
It’s pretty idealistic to say that equality was inevitable. It took over a hundred years and sacrifice and death to get -almost - there. Now a lot is being done to roll that back.
Matewan, Logan, Williamson and Welch are Appalachia .....not Middletown, O. People from Middletown would not survive there. The term redneck was coined during a 1921 miner's strike during the battle of Blair Mountain which followed the Matewan Massacre in 1920. The miners wore red handkerchiefs around their necks so they would not be shot by their allies. A shooting skirmish involving 5.000 men took place. Fortunately, they were not good marksmen. Though, there were 100 casualties, only a very few died. It is an interesting incident in history which was never widely publicized. The assassination of Sid Hatfield on the steps of the Logan County courthouse sparked the uprising. The movie filmed on location but not actually in Matewan.
Republican presidents in my lifetime attributed our nation's success to birthright citizenship: people arrive, put down roots, get jobs, pay taxes, start a family by having kids who are US citizens at birth. Skin in the game. We have used this reasoning lots of times (see, e.g., health care -- we don't want it to be completely free because then people would abuse it -- I've never totally understood this, but the theory is it makes you more responsible).
Contrast this with the recent real world example of Germany's guest worker program. Children of immigrant workers, brought there for jobs, were ineligible for benefits and citizenship. Some children born on German soil were stateless. It created a 2-tier system. Is this something we want here? So that not only children of recent immigrants, but my granddaughter also, have to prove their lineage is based on some sort of heritage or domicile or allegiance? Where is domicile located in the Constitution, exactly? I don't want that to become our norm. Show your papers? Republicans were always against national i.d.
I, too, was extremely dismayed to see this ridiculous description of "socialist shambles." What prompts this destructive label? Do you include Mamdani, for example, who is getting this done for his city?
Plus, stop with the demonizing of Platner. It get us nowhere.
According to DNA evidence and genealogy I am a direct matrilineal descendant of a woman who was born somewhere in East Asia 15 to 18 thousand years ago. She or at least two of her daughters walked or swam to what became known as the North American continent. My maternal grandmother was also born here in 1900 but was not a birthright citizen of the United States of America because she was a citizen of the Cherokee Nation by birth and the Marshall Decision declared that her citizenship was in a "domestic dependent nation" which excluded her from U.S. citizenship under the terms of Treaties with the United States including the Treaty of 1866 which also precluded inclusion within the boundaries of any State of the Union. Comes now the Territory of Oklahoma which, having seized the Cherokee Outlet and opened it for white settlement in the "Land Run" celebrated by the Oklahoma "Sooners" desiring to become a state in the Union. Mere Treaties would not stand in the way of westward expansion so Oklahoma expanded eastward and seized Indian Territory because, well, the land was perfectly good for white settlers who had descended on it in droves and outnumbered the tribal inhabitants. This seizure was accomplished by the Dawes Commission which allotted Indian Territory to citizens of the tribes which had been established there by Treaties with the tribes, including the so-called Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muscogee, and Seminole). These allotments were individual ownership interests granted to tribal citizens by their tribal governments as fee simple holdings which could be alienated except for full blood citizen allotments which could not be alienated without the approval of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. My grandmother, descended from Benjamin Petitt a British trader and not a full blood, received her unrestricted allotments (homestead and outlying) and her U.S. citizenship. The process was completed with the admission of the combined Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory as the State of Oklahoma admitted to the Union in 1907. Cherokee resistance to allotment resulted in our allotments being the last issued by the Dawes Commission. Issues arose after statehood for Oklahoma which resulted in Congress specifically continuing the government of the Cherokee Nation "in full force and effect" with no limiting conditions and it still operates today. Citizenship in Cherokee Nation is through descent from a Dawes enrollee and is not limited to U.S. citizens or birth in the United States. I am therefore a dual citizen in Cherokee Nation and the United States of America, voting in tribal, state, federal, and local elections and subject to the laws of all those governments with some exceptions carved out by the McGirt Decision of SCOTUS regarding jurisdiction in some criminal matters. Regarding U.S. citizenship, it appears that the Americans giveth and taketh away, world without end.
Mona, thank you for the clear-headed analysis. The problem is, that the Republic has suffered a coup and is now a regime ruled by King Leer. A fitting name for Trump, because he’s Shakespeare’s tragedy in motion and he flew the Lolita Express.
You have stated the precise fight, plainly. Birthright citizenship isn't a technicality about immigration—it's the load-bearing wall of the whole American claim to equality. Take it out and you're left asking the question King Leer's court is only too happy to answer: whose blood counts?
And what makes it so astonishing to me is that every white person in America is the descendant of an immigrant. Every one. Sure, you may have to go back a few generations, but the only people who could claim to be the original landowners would be the so-called First Nations, and even they were immigrants.
The small, telling detail you caught—the King, having lost at the Supreme Court, posting that Congress can "easily" reverse it "through legislation." That's not a legal opinion. It's a king informing his subjects that the ruling of a court is merely an inconvenience to be routed around. A man secure in constitutional government doesn't need to invent a workaround for a 9-0—or even 5-1—loss. He accepts it, the way every American president before him did, win or lose. That he can't is the whole story of who he is.
I've spent the past year writing about exactly this instinct—a president who rules with impunity, who treats the machinery of checks and balances as a personal inconvenience rather than the reason the office exists. It became a novel: https://thekingdomofamerica.com
Mona, This was a truly magnificent piece of writing and reporting. What should be self-evident is how obviously true everything you state is. Our exceptionalism was born in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Some of the greatest of our leaders have affirmed this with inspirational prose. The current regime is of man's basic instincts, domination, greed and ignorance. They will not win. As was mentioned in your piece, once men are exposed to equality, and in fact, to freedom the levels of strength to keep it, cannot be overcome.
I have no doubt that had birthright citizenship been invalidated, the regime would establish laws based on ideology and even "heritage" Americans could lose citizenship should they oppose the regime.
I've lived in a nice socialist country that was not a shambles. There are a few in Europe and elsewhere. I could argue that we could never implement the nice version here without some sort of treatment for the allergy many Americans have toward the word "socialism," but I do not buy the random assertion that seems to be the base bias here that all socialist projects lead to dysfunction.
My understanding of socialism is worker ownership of industry be it a farm or factory. That's it. The fact that those socialist countries provide a wealth of services for their citizens isn't socialism; it's decent people caring for each other. Costco is socialism and in the Basque country of Spain, Mondragon is a socialist governance.
Fair, but Americans tend to shorthand things like universal healthcare as socialism instead of just as having the same sorts of basic care as other nations producing at a similar or lower level of GDP per capita.
Yes, shorthand for evil by those with money. I think "they" should decry any public endeavor as socialism be it roads, schools, military, or you name it. Helping someone other than yourself is socialism and their response is, "I'm not paying for it," but socialism for the wealthy, well that's a good thing. Remember Reagan's "Welfare Queen"? I hope someone can come up with the "Corporate King"; driving up to the White House and shoveling public money into a semi-truck. Oh wait, that's our current regime.
Great column Mona. Interesting that Vance, et al., want these “Heritage Americans” to trace their roots back to the Civil War, I guess to incorporate as much grievance as possible. Why not back to the Revolution then, or even the Mayflower? The whole idea is ridiculous and un American. The US IS immigration and a society of equals.
Mona reveals too much with her “socialist shambles” comment equating Scandinavian politics with Trumpism. Disheartening that this is her world view.
Well done, Mona - thank you
It's a bit like why Social Security works and Medicaid doesn't. It's simple. With birthright citizenship, everyone who is born here gets it. There's no one gatekeeping. There's no extra cost. When you try to prevent fraud, all you do is enable it by creating byzantine bureaucracies, and you prevent the people who legitimately deserve it from getting it. As soon as you start gatekeeping, that's when the fraud starts.
A “socialist shambles” like Denmark? Excuse me if I don’t see the problem…
It’s pretty idealistic to say that equality was inevitable. It took over a hundred years and sacrifice and death to get -almost - there. Now a lot is being done to roll that back.
Matewan, Logan, Williamson and Welch are Appalachia .....not Middletown, O. People from Middletown would not survive there. The term redneck was coined during a 1921 miner's strike during the battle of Blair Mountain which followed the Matewan Massacre in 1920. The miners wore red handkerchiefs around their necks so they would not be shot by their allies. A shooting skirmish involving 5.000 men took place. Fortunately, they were not good marksmen. Though, there were 100 casualties, only a very few died. It is an interesting incident in history which was never widely publicized. The assassination of Sid Hatfield on the steps of the Logan County courthouse sparked the uprising. The movie filmed on location but not actually in Matewan.
Republican presidents in my lifetime attributed our nation's success to birthright citizenship: people arrive, put down roots, get jobs, pay taxes, start a family by having kids who are US citizens at birth. Skin in the game. We have used this reasoning lots of times (see, e.g., health care -- we don't want it to be completely free because then people would abuse it -- I've never totally understood this, but the theory is it makes you more responsible).
Contrast this with the recent real world example of Germany's guest worker program. Children of immigrant workers, brought there for jobs, were ineligible for benefits and citizenship. Some children born on German soil were stateless. It created a 2-tier system. Is this something we want here? So that not only children of recent immigrants, but my granddaughter also, have to prove their lineage is based on some sort of heritage or domicile or allegiance? Where is domicile located in the Constitution, exactly? I don't want that to become our norm. Show your papers? Republicans were always against national i.d.
Can you elaborate on “it becomes the socialist shambles that a growing number on the left envision”. What shambles??
I, too, was extremely dismayed to see this ridiculous description of "socialist shambles." What prompts this destructive label? Do you include Mamdani, for example, who is getting this done for his city?
Plus, stop with the demonizing of Platner. It get us nowhere.
According to DNA evidence and genealogy I am a direct matrilineal descendant of a woman who was born somewhere in East Asia 15 to 18 thousand years ago. She or at least two of her daughters walked or swam to what became known as the North American continent. My maternal grandmother was also born here in 1900 but was not a birthright citizen of the United States of America because she was a citizen of the Cherokee Nation by birth and the Marshall Decision declared that her citizenship was in a "domestic dependent nation" which excluded her from U.S. citizenship under the terms of Treaties with the United States including the Treaty of 1866 which also precluded inclusion within the boundaries of any State of the Union. Comes now the Territory of Oklahoma which, having seized the Cherokee Outlet and opened it for white settlement in the "Land Run" celebrated by the Oklahoma "Sooners" desiring to become a state in the Union. Mere Treaties would not stand in the way of westward expansion so Oklahoma expanded eastward and seized Indian Territory because, well, the land was perfectly good for white settlers who had descended on it in droves and outnumbered the tribal inhabitants. This seizure was accomplished by the Dawes Commission which allotted Indian Territory to citizens of the tribes which had been established there by Treaties with the tribes, including the so-called Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muscogee, and Seminole). These allotments were individual ownership interests granted to tribal citizens by their tribal governments as fee simple holdings which could be alienated except for full blood citizen allotments which could not be alienated without the approval of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. My grandmother, descended from Benjamin Petitt a British trader and not a full blood, received her unrestricted allotments (homestead and outlying) and her U.S. citizenship. The process was completed with the admission of the combined Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory as the State of Oklahoma admitted to the Union in 1907. Cherokee resistance to allotment resulted in our allotments being the last issued by the Dawes Commission. Issues arose after statehood for Oklahoma which resulted in Congress specifically continuing the government of the Cherokee Nation "in full force and effect" with no limiting conditions and it still operates today. Citizenship in Cherokee Nation is through descent from a Dawes enrollee and is not limited to U.S. citizens or birth in the United States. I am therefore a dual citizen in Cherokee Nation and the United States of America, voting in tribal, state, federal, and local elections and subject to the laws of all those governments with some exceptions carved out by the McGirt Decision of SCOTUS regarding jurisdiction in some criminal matters. Regarding U.S. citizenship, it appears that the Americans giveth and taketh away, world without end.
Mona, thank you for the clear-headed analysis. The problem is, that the Republic has suffered a coup and is now a regime ruled by King Leer. A fitting name for Trump, because he’s Shakespeare’s tragedy in motion and he flew the Lolita Express.
You have stated the precise fight, plainly. Birthright citizenship isn't a technicality about immigration—it's the load-bearing wall of the whole American claim to equality. Take it out and you're left asking the question King Leer's court is only too happy to answer: whose blood counts?
And what makes it so astonishing to me is that every white person in America is the descendant of an immigrant. Every one. Sure, you may have to go back a few generations, but the only people who could claim to be the original landowners would be the so-called First Nations, and even they were immigrants.
The small, telling detail you caught—the King, having lost at the Supreme Court, posting that Congress can "easily" reverse it "through legislation." That's not a legal opinion. It's a king informing his subjects that the ruling of a court is merely an inconvenience to be routed around. A man secure in constitutional government doesn't need to invent a workaround for a 9-0—or even 5-1—loss. He accepts it, the way every American president before him did, win or lose. That he can't is the whole story of who he is.
I've spent the past year writing about exactly this instinct—a president who rules with impunity, who treats the machinery of checks and balances as a personal inconvenience rather than the reason the office exists. It became a novel: https://thekingdomofamerica.com
Mona, This was a truly magnificent piece of writing and reporting. What should be self-evident is how obviously true everything you state is. Our exceptionalism was born in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Some of the greatest of our leaders have affirmed this with inspirational prose. The current regime is of man's basic instincts, domination, greed and ignorance. They will not win. As was mentioned in your piece, once men are exposed to equality, and in fact, to freedom the levels of strength to keep it, cannot be overcome.
I have no doubt that had birthright citizenship been invalidated, the regime would establish laws based on ideology and even "heritage" Americans could lose citizenship should they oppose the regime.
I've lived in a nice socialist country that was not a shambles. There are a few in Europe and elsewhere. I could argue that we could never implement the nice version here without some sort of treatment for the allergy many Americans have toward the word "socialism," but I do not buy the random assertion that seems to be the base bias here that all socialist projects lead to dysfunction.
My understanding of socialism is worker ownership of industry be it a farm or factory. That's it. The fact that those socialist countries provide a wealth of services for their citizens isn't socialism; it's decent people caring for each other. Costco is socialism and in the Basque country of Spain, Mondragon is a socialist governance.
Fair, but Americans tend to shorthand things like universal healthcare as socialism instead of just as having the same sorts of basic care as other nations producing at a similar or lower level of GDP per capita.
Yes, shorthand for evil by those with money. I think "they" should decry any public endeavor as socialism be it roads, schools, military, or you name it. Helping someone other than yourself is socialism and their response is, "I'm not paying for it," but socialism for the wealthy, well that's a good thing. Remember Reagan's "Welfare Queen"? I hope someone can come up with the "Corporate King"; driving up to the White House and shoveling public money into a semi-truck. Oh wait, that's our current regime.
Great column Mona. Interesting that Vance, et al., want these “Heritage Americans” to trace their roots back to the Civil War, I guess to incorporate as much grievance as possible. Why not back to the Revolution then, or even the Mayflower? The whole idea is ridiculous and un American. The US IS immigration and a society of equals.
Birth tourism is to demographics what trans acceptance is to sports. Socialist dystopia is to economics what democracy is to feudalism.