Citizenship

I tell our son all the time: Vote, vote, vote. Vote every time there’s an election. Vote when there’s a presidential election, a midterm, a local election, a special election or a primary. Voting is one of the most important rights we have as citizens, a right people in this country have bled to attain and protect. Voting can help determine the course of this country more effectively than anything else can. You may not find the perfect candidate who exactly aligns with your goals but you can still vote for one who can get you closer to those goals.

He’s only 10 and tired of hearing it. But from an early age, my parents drilled it into me to vote, and it worked. I’ve been voting faithfully since I was 18 (the 1992 presidential primary was days after my birthday and I was so happy I could vote immediately), skipping very few elections, none of them major. I’m hoping the message will rub off on our son the same way my parents’ message rubbed off on me.

I think of this sometimes when I see where we are as a country and how different things could have been the last two years if voting had gone slightly differently. The latest thing that appalls me is President Trump’s idea to use an executive order to end birthright citizenship, which is enshrined in the Fourteenth Amendment. This could mean that children born in this country would not automatically be considered citizens if their parents were immigrants.

Were my Dad and his sisters not American citizens because their parents were born in Ireland? Think of how many people you know, maybe in your family tree, who are children of immigrants and imagine that they are no longer considered citizens even after a lifetime of living here.

Of course, I highly doubt anyone would have said someone like my Dad wasn’t a citizen. No, this idea is aimed at the fear of too many brown-skinned people coming to America, like this caravan the right wing is touting like it’s some extremely slow Category 5 hurricane: “They’re coming! They’re a thousand miles away and they have leprosy and there are Ay-rab terrorists hiding among them and they’re (eventually) coming to kill you!” These are people seeking refuge from some terror in Central America, like so many have sought refuge from awful things during American history. Yet we need to dispatch a bigger contingent of soldiers than we’ve dispatched to Syria to deal with people applying for asylum. All this to defend something that, if the refugees do improperly, would be a misdemeanor.

I don’t understand this. It seems like some people believe the following things about this caravan, which they think are simultaneously true by some acrobatic physics:

1. They’re too lazy to work and will take advantage of your Hard-Earned Tax Dollars to get public assistance; and

2. They’re going to take your jobs, even though they’re menial jobs that you’re too good for anyway.

Using an executive order to supersede the Fourteenth Amendment is some half-baked idea from a fever swamp, and even if it never comes to pass, it’s alarming to see the president of the United States endorsing it. That man swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution and now he’s in effect saying his word and his will would instead be supreme, and that is a terrible abuse of power and a dereliction of duty. (This confirms what I feel is one of the problems with the way Trump governs: He does it like a 72-year-old who watches a lot of Fox News. You or I could see something on the news that outrages us and say “There oughta be a law!” but we don’t need to know all the intricacies of what would need to happen, since we’re not the president. Well, Trump is the president and should have an understanding of these things, but on too many things, he doesn’t.)

From what I’ve been reading, the Fourteenth Amendment was a reaction to the evils of Dred Scott, which decided that black people could never be citizens, even if they were born here. In the late 19^th century, America tried to deny citizenship to a Chinese-American who had been born here (the Chinese being the personae non grata of their day), but the Supreme Court affirmed her citizenship. I read one recent author who said since the amendment passed, the “birthright has been affirmed, again and again, ensuring that no matter how racist the regime, the Constitution grants citizenship to all people born in the United States.”

I think that’s so important because other countries have declared groups of people un-citizens as a pretext to denying them other rights and visiting great evils on those people. If they don’t consider you human, there’s no reason to treat you like a human. Here in America, if you’re born here, you’re one of us, and that’s fundamental to our country’s character.

If this executive order came to pass, I’m sure it would go right to the Supreme Court. I’d hope that regardless of politics, those nine justices would not want to invalidate 150 years of established judicial precedent regarding a basic right, but who knows. That’s what disturbed me about Brett Kavanaugh: His partisan outbursts at the hearing made it clear that he was a Republican loyalist. The people are entitled to a Supreme Court that rules on the basis of law and not partisan loyalty, whether those justices are appointed by Democrats or Republicans.

That brings me back to voting. If the 2016 vote had gone slightly differently, we would not have a president proposing ending birthright citizenship. If the Senate vote had gone differently in a few races, Kavanaugh might not have been confirmed with the thinnest of majorities and he might not be a potential decisive vote on what would be a hugely consequential case.

So get out there on Tuesday, and on all the future Tuesdays, and vote, vote, vote. It’s an important part of citizenship and even if it doesn’t impact you immediately, your vote could have a profound impact on the future.