Writing in today's Los Angeles Times, Mitchell Young advocated the end of "birthright citizenship" in the United States, firmly established by the Supreme Court in 1898, a right the Irish voted to end in 2004. Young suggests that birthright citizenship is a product of feudal law, and is just untenable in a land of 11 million undocumented immigrants. What he is too educated and polite to say is what undergirds any problem with "birthright citizenship." Seeking to end "birthright citizenship" speaks, on one level, to a policy opposing state responsibilities to undocumented immigrant parents of U.S. citizens. I don't have much sympathy for that line of argument either, but at least it's a rational view from a policy standpoint.
The bigger issue is that Young and others are looking at the first president to have a father hailing from the 2/3 world, whose mother was an Anglo U.S. citizen, though a few conservatives have sought to prove that President is somehow not a citizen of the U.S. President Obama speaks symbolically to a larger truth. If birthright citizenship and current immigration trends continue, traditional "white" U.S. citizens will be a minority in a country they believe is theirs. The fear that this country will belong to people who no longer phenotypically resemble the "Founding Fathers" undergirds Young's real concern. Even if birthright citizenship originates in English feudal common law, it is practiced by most respectable countries in the world who attempt to be non-racist in their legislation from Costa Rica to Germany. Japan and Ireland, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are the places who would deny birthright citizenship, and most people understand that racism undergirds most of their reasoning. I would be pretty disgusted if the U.S. decided to join their ranks out of fear.
But Mr. Young, let's run with your point. I will support denying birthright citizenship if every single adult person (under 70) living in the U.S. is required to take the exact same citizenship test that those who become naturalized citizens are required to take. I'm not sure what poor country should be given the large swath of U.S. citizens who won't pass the test. Maybe they should just spend their life in detention facilities, dying of a heart attack without care and being erased from legal memory like Pakistani immigrant, Ahmad Tanveer.
In memoriam, 2012
11 years ago
3 comments:
I don't know what my 'blowback' had to do with Presdient Obama, or 'white paranoai'. It has to do with an outdated citizenship law that needs revision. And you are wrong about Germany giving automatic birthright citizenship. It denies citizenship unless at least one parent is legally in the country and has been resident for quite a while.
A child can attain German citizenship by being born in Germany even if neither parent is German. However this only applies to children born on or after 1 January 2000.
A further condition is that one parent has been legally resident in Germany for eight years and has a right of unlimited residence or for three years an unlimited residence permit. Children who become German citizens in this way must however decide between the age of 18 and 23 whether they want to retain German citizenship or the citizenship of their parents.
I'm impressed that you troll the blogs, even minor ones. I accept my information was wrong about Germany's official rules. Is that the system you would prefer to advocate, citizenship for those whose parents have been legal residents? But my question still goes, what is your underlying concern? Why should people born in the U.S. be denied citizenship? Why should a law that has stood for over a century change now? I am suggesting (in your case for the U.S. as in the case of Ireland in 2004) it is about a desire to control precisely the racial and ethnic heritage of who can be a U.S. citizen. You have an underlying reason that was not expressed in your essay, and people who share this view also have one. Citizenship as it currently stands does cause suffering by splitting families between undocumented and natural-born. Why would you seek to increase the inhumanity of this system? And if you are going to change the birthright citizenship, how are you planning to define the qualities of a "citizen"? What does make somebody a legitimate citizen?
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