There are very few issues on which I agree at all with Donald Trump.
He has demonized the issue of birthright citizenship to the point of exacerbating racism in America, hardly surprising when you recognize that his entire political career from the time he came down the elevator at Trump Tower in 2015 has been about division.
You can go all the way back to his early days working for his father and see where they were penalized by the government for racism in refusing to rent apartments to African-Americans. Then there was his racist crusade against the so-called Central Park Five when he continued to attack them even after DNA evidence exonerated them.
And of course there were his birther attacks on President Obama that continued even after they were proved wrong.
Donald, three strikes and you’re out.
We have lovely parting gifts for you, including a brand-new KKK robe.
But birthright citizenship?
There are at least some minor problems with it that would be very difficult to solve. The original aim of the 14th Amendment was undoing one of the worst Supreme Court decisions ever. Dred Scott v Sandford (1857), more widely known as just the Dred Scott Decision, was a case in which the Court ruled that enslaved African-Americans were not and could never be citizens of the United States.
Not such a great shock when you realize that the U.S. Constitution originally held that black slaves only counted as three-fifths of a person (but didn’t even grant them three-fifths of a vote).
The 14th Amendment was one of three dealing with former slaves. The 13th abolished chattel slavery, the 14th granted citizenship and the 15th gave them the right to vote, although full rights for African-Americans were much longer in coming.
Black people were not the only victims of racism. For many years, some Asian immigrants were barred from full citizenship. The Issei — Japanese immigrants — were forbidden from being naturalized citizens until Congress changed the law in 1952. But their children born in America — the Nisei — at least technically were U.S. citizens, although that didn’t prevent them from being interned during World War II.
At least we apologized for that one, even though it took until the 1980s.
Trump never apologizes. In fact, he was quoted once when asked if he ever asked God’s forgiveness by saying he would if he ever needed to.
His minions take him at his word. A caller on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal show said Monday that American citizenship should be limited to what it was in 1790.
“The very first naturalization laws that they put in place in 1790 said you had to be a free white person of good character to become a citizen.”
Fascinating when you realize that the Census Bureau says between 56-60 percent of Americans identify as non-Hispanic White, a number that is declining all the time.
So making citizenship about race is ridiculous. And Trump is wrong when he says this is the only country in the world with birthright citizenship. In fact, 35 countries have unconditional birthright citizenship, including almost all the nations in the Western Hemisphere. One of my granddaughters has birthright citizenship by virtue of being born in Jamaica.
My other granddaughter was born abroad as well, but in a nation without birthright citizenship. In both cases, they were born in foreign countries because their mother was serving in the U.S. Foreign Service.
In fact, one of the few exceptions here is that the U.S. does not consider children of foreign diplomats serving in the U.S. as American citizens.
But we do consider children of tourists born here and of undocumented immigrants crossing the border for the purpose of giving birth as our citizens, and that seems a little bit odd to me.
The problem is drawing the line. Do we prevent women in the last trimester of pregnancy from entering the country? Do we say that children born whose mothers weren’t here for a certain length of time don’t count?
Unfortunately, it all gets tangled up in racism. The tourists being complained about are usually Chinese and the border crossers are nearly always Hispanic.
When you think about it, most of America’s greatest sins have grown out of racism. First was essentially stealing the country from Native Americans, second was chattel slavery and third was the treatment of Asians.
Strike three, as with Donald?
Well, we are still making an effort to improve, so let’s extend the baseball metaphor and call the third one a foul ball.
Just keep Donald away from the bats.