I’m the beneficiary of birthright citizenship three times over.
My maternal grandmother, Marcela Fernández, was born in 1914 in an Arizona copper town to parents who fled the Mexican Revolution before returning to their mountain pueblo in Zacatecas. She relocated to the country of her birth in the early 1960s with my grandfather, José Miranda, after frost and drought ruined the family farm in their hometown of El Cargadero.
My Mama Chela’s U.S. citizenship allowed all her children to come here legally. One of them was my mother, María de la Luz. As a permanent resident, Mami could easily travel back and forth between Anaheim and El Cargadero when others had to wait for years for visas or come into el Norte without papers.
One of them was my father, Lorenzo Arellano.
When my parents married in 1977, my mother legalized his status. They became U.S. citizens in the mid-1990s, joining my three siblings and me — all born in los Estados Unidos — as Americans in the eyes of the law.
For my family, having kids who were U.S. citizens by birth was never about exploiting loopholes or taking advantage of taxpayers. It’s what naturally happens when immigrants seek a better life. It gave multiple generations the assurance that we couldn’t easily be deported, unlike others we knew who didn’t have the good fortune to be born here.
That security allowed us to do everything immigrants and their children are supposed to do: buy homes, build careers, contribute to civic life and love this country. I’ve never once taken it for granted, especially as friends and family members have lived for decades in a terrible limbo over their legal status.
Birthright citizenship immeasurably helped my family’s American dream. So, yeah, I’m especially offended that President Trump and his lackeys want it dead.
He tried to end it with an executive order the first day of his second term, stating that the “sacred honor” of American citizenship “has been abused” by people like my family. That led to a lawsuit that the Supreme Court heard this week. Trump sat in the front row for part of the oral arguments, becoming the first sitting president to attend such a hearing.
Think of all the historic cases the highest court in the land has heard in its 237 years. An attempt to strike down birthright citizenship — which many legal scholars say is enshrined in the 14th Amendment and secured by an 1898 Supreme Court case — was the first time a commander in chief swung by?
Trump left the courtroom after conservative judges — some appointed by him — openly scoffed at the Department of Justice’s arguments. No decision is expected until summer, but MAGA Nation reacted as if Chief Justice John Roberts had announced that he would personally deliver every non-white baby on the planet and issue them a Social Security number on the spot.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller — whose maternal great-grandfather arrived in this country just five years before mine — whined, “Birthright citizenship means the children of illegal aliens can vote to tax your children and seize their inheritance.”
The social media account for the Senate Republican Conference thundered, “Birthright citizenship for illegal aliens is a national security risk.”
Conservative influencer Matt Walsh claimed that the argument for birthright citizenship — which, again, rests on the Constitution and a previous Supreme Court decision — is “so psychotic that you can’t even argue against it. Like trying to have a political debate with a dog.”
Ann Coulter, classless as always, described birthright citizenship as “if an 8-month-pregnant Mexican woman runs across the border and drops a baby.”
Trump, for his part, huffed, “We are the only Country in the World STUPID enough to allow ‘Birthright’ Citizenship!” Not true — the Pew Research Center found 32 countries that have standards just like ours, while at least 50 others allow people born within their borders to become citizens if they meet certain criteria.
But since when did facts get in the way of a Trumpian lie spewed in the name of a bigoted narrative? Just check out the Department of Homeland Security’s press release announcing that two American citizens charged with attempting to bomb an Air Force base were the children of “illegal aliens” from China. I’ve never seen DHS do that for white criminals.
For an administration headed by a convicted felon who thinks of the American justice system as a mace with which to crush his enemies, rolling back birthright citizenship isn’t about the rule of law. It’s about keeping this country as white as possible — just like in the past.
The Supreme Court case establishing birthright citizenship involved a Chinese American man named Wong Kim Ark, born to parents who came here legally but couldn’t become citizens because of the era’s anti-Chinese laws. The derogatory term “anchor baby” emerged in the 1980s and originally referred to the U.S.-born children of Vietnamese refugees — who were here legally, by the way.
In the 1990s, politicians tried to one-up each other with xenophobic legislation and ballot initiatives to fight against what they claimed was an invasion from Mexico — and we children of immigrants were a top target. It wasn’t just Republicans: No less a liberal lion than then-U.S. Sen. Harry Reid blasted birthright citizenship in 1993, arguing that “no sane country would do that” as he introduced an unsuccessful bill to end the practice. Thirteen years later, Reid said it was “the biggest mistake I ever made.”
Trump World’s insistence that who belongs in this country should be based on blood and heritage, not ideals and birthplace, would have excluded my family long ago, even as their labor was gladly accepted in exploitative industries such as mining, agriculture and trucking.
That’s what makes Trump’s racist crusade especially sickening. If birthright citizenship were to end, he might try to retroactively take away the citizenship of those who have benefited from it, as some have called for him to do. Republican lawmakers have already stated their intent to challenge Plyler vs. Doe, a 1982 Supreme Court decision that allows the children of illegal immigrants, whether U.S. citizens or not, to attend public schools. Those two moves, if successful, would create a two-tiered system straight out of South Africa’s apartheid era.
And that would be the point. If you don’t think the Trump administration is racist at its core, you must also think his orange skin is natural.
Ending birthright citizenship is morally wrong, economically stupid and increasingly unpopular. If the Supreme Court does vote to maintain the 14th Amendment as is, expect Republicans to come up with legislation to enact their racist aims.
But they’re fighting a lost cause. In a Fox News poll last month, 69% of voters thought that children born to undocumented immigrants should automatically become citizens. That’s way up from 45% of those polled 20 years ago.
When Fox News viewers think a MAGA dog whistle is wrong, you know you’re on the wrong side of history.
The post Birthright citizenship secured my family’s American dream. No wonder Trump hates it appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
