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Saturday, August 21, 2010
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
With Friends Like These, Who Needs Glenn Beck? Racism and White Privilege on the Liberal-Left.
In this essay, I will explore the other side of the equation: namely, how even liberals, progressives and leftists, despite our advocacy for equity and stated commitment to racial justice, still manage to manifest and further racism — whether deliberately or not — in our activism, messages and policy prescriptions.
His words rang out with an unmistakable certitude.
“This is the most racist place I’ve ever lived,” said the man sitting across from me, a black writer and poet whose acquaintance I had only made earlier that day.
His expression made it clear that this was no mere hyperbole spat out so as to get a reaction. He meant every word and proceeded in about twenty minutes to lay out the case for why indeed this place where we were talking — San Francisco — was far more racist, in his estimation than any of several places he had lived in the South.
Worse than Birmingham. Worse than Jackson, Mississippi. Worse than Dallas.
San Francisco. Yes, that San Francisco. More here.
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers Tour Across the Country with the Florida Modern Day Slavery Museum.
Housed in a box truck, the museum is on a sixty-stop tour across the country. Democracy Now! caught up with the tour in front of Judson Memorial Church in New York City and was given a tour by Julia Perkins, who has been organizing with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Florida for the last ten years.
For more information, visit their website.
Sharpton takes 'Hu$h' Money from Bloomberg.
The Rev. Al Sharpton finally disagreed with Mayor Bloomberg a week ago on how to change elections in the city. It was a long time coming.
The most prominent African-American voice in New York has a warm and productive relationship with its richest and most powerful white man. They don't always agree, but they always get along.
On Aug. 7, Sharpton said he would fight any push to make city elections nonpartisan - which Bloomberg hoped to do this fall.
His public stand helped kill the idea. Barely 48 hours later, Bloomberg pulled the plug.
Two years earlier, though, Sharpton stayed mum while Bloomberg rammed through a law to extend term limits so he could run again.
Why?
Perhaps because, as the city was convulsed over term limits, Sharpton's National Action Network got a $110,000 grant from a brand-new nonprofit funded by Bloomberg.
More here
The most prominent African-American voice in New York has a warm and productive relationship with its richest and most powerful white man. They don't always agree, but they always get along.
His public stand helped kill the idea. Barely 48 hours later, Bloomberg pulled the plug.
Two years earlier, though, Sharpton stayed mum while Bloomberg rammed through a law to extend term limits so he could run again.
Why?
Perhaps because, as the city was convulsed over term limits, Sharpton's National Action Network got a $110,000 grant from a brand-new nonprofit funded by Bloomberg.
More here
Saturday, August 7, 2010
"Papa Doc" Wyclef Jean: New Knee-Grow Dictator of Haiti?
"Every election since a 67% majority first brought Aristide to power in 1990 has demonstrated the enormous popularity of the Lavalas movement. When Lavalas could run, they won overwhelmingly. In 2006, when security conditions did not permit them to run candidates, they voted and demonstrated to make sure Rene Preval, a former Lavalas president, was re-elected.
Preval, however, turned against those who voted for him. He scheduled elections for 12 Senate seats in 2009, and supported the Electoral Council’s rejection of all Lavalas candidates. Lavalas called for a boycott, and as few as 3% of Haitians voted, with fewer than 1% voting in the runoff, once again demonstrating the people’s love and respect for President Aristide.
Fanmi Lavalas has already been banned from the next round of elections, so enter Wyclef Jean. Jean comes from a prominent Haitian family that has virulently opposed Lavalas since the 1990 elections. His uncle is Raymond Joseph (also a rumored presidential candidate,) who became Haitian ambassador to the United States under the coup government and remains so today. Kevin Pina writes in “It’s not All about That!: Wyclef Jean is fronting in Haiti,” Joseph is “the co-publisher of Haiti Observateur, a right-wing rag that has been an apologist for the killers in the Haitian military going back as far as the brutal coup against Aristide in 1991.
“On October 26th [2004] Haitian police entered the pro-Aristide slum of Fort Nationale and summarily executed 13 young men. Wyclef Jean said nothing. On October 28th the Haitian police executed five young men, babies really, in the pro-Aristide slum of Bel Air. Wyclef said nothing. If Wyclef really wants to be part of Haiti’s political dialogue he would acknowledge these facts. Unfortunately, Wyclef is fronting.” As if to prove it, the Miami Herald reported on 2/28/10, “secret polling by foreign powers in search of a new face to lead Haiti’s reconstruction . . .” might favor Jean’s candidacy, as someone with sufficient name recognition who could draw enough votes to overcome another Lavalas electoral boycott.
Wyclef Jean supported the 2004 coup. When gun-running former army and death squad members trained by the CIA were overrunning Haiti’s north on February 25, 2004, MTV’s Gideon Yago wrote, “Wyclef Jean voiced his support for Haitian rebels on Wednesday, calling on embattled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to step down and telling his fans in Haiti to ‘keep their head up’ as the country braces itself for possible civil war.” During the Obama inaugural celebration, Jean famously and perversely serenaded Colin Powell, the Bush administration Secretary of State during the U.S. destabilization campaign and eventual coup against Aristide, with Bob Marley’s Redemption Song.
Jean also produced the movie “The Ghosts of Cite Soleil,” an anti-Aristide and Lavalas hit piece, which tells us that President Aristide left voluntarily, without mention of his kidnapping by the U.S. military, and presents the main coup leaders in a favorable light. It features interviews with sweatshop owners Andy Apaid and Charles Henry Baker without telling us they hate Aristide, because he raised the minimum wage and sought to give all Haitians a seat at the table by democratizing Haiti’s economy, a program opposed by the rich in Haiti.
It uncritically interviews coup leader Louis Jodel Chamblain, without telling us he worked with the Duvalier dictatorship’s brutal militia, the Tonton Macoutes, in the 1980s; that following the coup against Aristide in 1991, he was the “operations guy” for the FRAPH paramilitary death squad, accused of murdering uncounted numbers of Aristide supporters and introducing gang rape into Haiti as a military weapon."
More here.
Fanmi Lavalas has already been banned from the next round of elections, so enter Wyclef Jean. Jean comes from a prominent Haitian family that has virulently opposed Lavalas since the 1990 elections. His uncle is Raymond Joseph (also a rumored presidential candidate,) who became Haitian ambassador to the United States under the coup government and remains so today. Kevin Pina writes in “It’s not All about That!: Wyclef Jean is fronting in Haiti,” Joseph is “the co-publisher of Haiti Observateur, a right-wing rag that has been an apologist for the killers in the Haitian military going back as far as the brutal coup against Aristide in 1991.
“On October 26th [2004] Haitian police entered the pro-Aristide slum of Fort Nationale and summarily executed 13 young men. Wyclef Jean said nothing. On October 28th the Haitian police executed five young men, babies really, in the pro-Aristide slum of Bel Air. Wyclef said nothing. If Wyclef really wants to be part of Haiti’s political dialogue he would acknowledge these facts. Unfortunately, Wyclef is fronting.” As if to prove it, the Miami Herald reported on 2/28/10, “secret polling by foreign powers in search of a new face to lead Haiti’s reconstruction . . .” might favor Jean’s candidacy, as someone with sufficient name recognition who could draw enough votes to overcome another Lavalas electoral boycott.
Wyclef Jean supported the 2004 coup. When gun-running former army and death squad members trained by the CIA were overrunning Haiti’s north on February 25, 2004, MTV’s Gideon Yago wrote, “Wyclef Jean voiced his support for Haitian rebels on Wednesday, calling on embattled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to step down and telling his fans in Haiti to ‘keep their head up’ as the country braces itself for possible civil war.” During the Obama inaugural celebration, Jean famously and perversely serenaded Colin Powell, the Bush administration Secretary of State during the U.S. destabilization campaign and eventual coup against Aristide, with Bob Marley’s Redemption Song.
Jean also produced the movie “The Ghosts of Cite Soleil,” an anti-Aristide and Lavalas hit piece, which tells us that President Aristide left voluntarily, without mention of his kidnapping by the U.S. military, and presents the main coup leaders in a favorable light. It features interviews with sweatshop owners Andy Apaid and Charles Henry Baker without telling us they hate Aristide, because he raised the minimum wage and sought to give all Haitians a seat at the table by democratizing Haiti’s economy, a program opposed by the rich in Haiti.
It uncritically interviews coup leader Louis Jodel Chamblain, without telling us he worked with the Duvalier dictatorship’s brutal militia, the Tonton Macoutes, in the 1980s; that following the coup against Aristide in 1991, he was the “operations guy” for the FRAPH paramilitary death squad, accused of murdering uncounted numbers of Aristide supporters and introducing gang rape into Haiti as a military weapon."
More here.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
New Nativism: Anti-Immigration Politics and the Fourteenth Amendment.
By Eric Ward.
The Fourteenth Amendment is the very basis of American citizenship.
Created in the aftermath of the Civil War in response to continued discrimination against African Americans, it provides the first and only clear definition of citizenship in our Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment is a subject of inestimable import to African Americans whose citizens’ rights have been historically guaranteed by this amendment. For African Americans, the Fourteenth Amendment is a cornerstone for key civil rights laws such as the right to vote, equal access, and protection against job discrimination. Shockingly, this pillar of American citizenship is under attack by anti-immigration advocacy groups today.
While such contemporary efforts to gut the Fourteenth Amendment are looked upon as political grandstanding, with virtually no possibility of gaining traction in law or in the public arena, African Americans ought to be more sober in their assessment of this growing assault upon civil right in the United States.
The following pages explain why attempts by immigration opponents to undermine the Fourteenth Amendment are unconstitutional and flirt dangerously with the undemocratic traditions of racism and xenophobia that Americans have fought so hard to dismantle. The paper begins with a brief history of the Fourteenth Amendment, discusses why anti-immigration advocates seek to dismantle a key provision of it, and explains the reasons why attempts to alter the Fourteenth Amendment should be firmly rejected. Whatever one’s position on immigration policy reform, shaking the foundations of American citizenship is the wrong way to go about achieving it. Despite the complexity of the immigration controversy, preserving the Fourteenth Amendment must be an absolutely non-negotiable aspect of immigration reform in the United States.
A Brief History
The Fourteenth Amendment states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” It was ratified in 1868 in response to the “Black Codes,” laws that the former slave states passed to prevent the newly freed men and women from choosing their professions, owning or leasing land, accessing public accommodations, and voting. The Fourteenth Amendment abolished these Codes by asserting the equal rights of all U.S. citizens. To do this, it clearly defines U.S. citizenship for the first time in the Constitution: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” This provision overturned the controversial 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford Supreme Court decision, which stated that African Americans (free or slave) were not U.S. citizens and that they were “so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”
Enacted alongside the Thirteenth and Fifteenth amendments (ratified in 1865 and 1870, respectively), these three “Civil War Amendments,” as they are sometimes called, were crucial in abolishing slavery, asserting equal citizenship rights, and resisting racial injustice. The Fourteenth Amendment, in particular, is a cornerstone of U.S. citizenship and civil rights. It lies at the heart of American freedom, guaranteeing equal standing and equal treatment under the law.
“Anchor babies” and the Fourteenth Amendment
Despite this proud history, anti-immigration organizations have launched an assault on the Fourteenth Amendment, seeking to alter one of its key clauses. These groups are demanding that the Fourteenth Amendment be amended to eliminate the clause establishing birthright citizenship, or calling for Congress to pass legislation that would effectively do the same thing.
For example, in 2003 Representative Mark Foley (R-FL) introduced H.J. Res. 44, “The Citizen Reform Amendment,” which would have amended the Constitution to eliminate birthright citizenship to babies born in the United States unless one parent is a U.S. citizen or permanent resident. As he has done in previous years, Representative Nathan Deal (R-GA) recently re-introduced his birthright citizenship bill (H.R. 1868) that proposes the same thing. (Constitutional law scholar Michael Houston calls such bills “essentially constitutional amendments under the guise of legislation,” which he criticizes as a clear violation of separation of powers.)
Anti-immigration groups enthusiastically support such bills as a means to eliminate what they term “anchor babies,” a pejorative term for U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants. The term “anchor baby” refers to the speculative possibility that when such children turn 21, they will sponsor their extended families for U.S. residency and thus become an “anchor” for the entire family to reside legally in the United States. Anchor babies, critics charge, “act as an anchor that pulls the illegal alien mother and eventually a host of other relatives into permanent U.S. residency.” Anti-immigrant groups also claim that birthright citizenship provides a “perverse incentive” for foreign pregnant women to enter the United States illegally just prior to giving birth. Apocalyptic predictions inevitably follow. For example, former chairman of the House Immigration Reform Committee and former 2008 Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo (R-CO) once stated, “If we do not control immigration, legal and illegal, we will eventually reach the point where it won’t be what kind of nation we are, balkanized or united; we will have to face the fact that we are no longer a nation at all.”
Given the way these attacks on birthright citizenship threaten civil rights, it should perhaps be no surprise that they fit uncomfortably well with the long, tragic history of nativism and racial discrimination in this country. For example, in 1883 the United States passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which aimed to prevent the immigration of Chinese laborers and prohibited Chinese nationals from obtaining citizenship. (This was a temporary measure repeatedly renewed until made permanent in 1904.) The 1924 Immigration Act (better known as the National Origins Act) broadened this xenophobic exclusivity by setting immigration quotas according to national origin, capping immigration levels at two percent of a nationality’s total population living in the U.S. in 1890—a year selected because it preceded the large-scale arrival of Eastern and Southern Europeans, populations which the act deliberately sought to restrict. It was not until the Immigration Act of 1965 (also known as the Hart-Cellar Act) that the United States eliminated quotas based upon national origin and replaced it with a system tying immigration to profession and skills possessed. This legislation was enacted as a result of the civil rights movement’s efforts to end racial and ethnic discrimination—and to fully apply the Fourteenth Amendment to all citizens. But even during the dark days of blatant discrimination, birthright citizenship was still considered to be the law of the land, even by immigration opponents.
Further, many of the most prominent opponents of birthright citizenship today have expressed racist and/or xenophobic sentiments, and several of them have unsettling ties to white supremacist organizations. While it would certainly be unfair and inaccurate to generalize all opponents of birthright citizenship as racist, racially prejudiced attitudes among the leadership of this movement are well documented. A few examples follow:
■The Federation of American Immigration Reform, one of the most influential opponents of birthright citizenship, was founded by John Tanton, who has made a number of anti-Latino comments over the years. For example, in a 1986 memo he warned of a “Latin onslaught” and lamented that the American Caucasian majority would be forced to hand off their political power “to a group that is simply more fertile.”
■Mothers Against Illegal Aliens founder and president Michelle Dallacroce writes that “anchor babies” have “invaded our nation” and characterizes their very presence as a “hostile occupation” of the United States.
■The Council of Conservative Citizens (formerly the pro-segregation White Citizens Council) denounces immigration using an explicitly racist language, writing, “We believe that the U.S. is a European Country and that Americans are part of a European People. We therefore oppose the massive immigration of non-European and non-Western people in the United States that threaten to transform our nation into a non-European majority in our lifetime” (Francis 2008). The C of CC also opposes all racially mixed activities.
■V-Dare’s anti-immigration philosophy also has unabashedly racist roots. The group warns that unchecked immigration will make whites a minority within the United States. The organization’s most prominent member, journalist and author Peter Brimelow, argues that the United States is a historically Caucasian country and has a right to remain this way. V-Dare’s website denounces “anchor babies” as “equivalent to, in football parlance, piling on,” lamenting, “Not only do we get the illegal aliens, we also get their impossible-to-deport American citizen babies.”
What these examples illustrate is that the movement against birthright citizenship is not just an attack on the Fourteenth Amendment and the great body of civil rights legislation that rests upon it, but one that is led by many persons with a racist worldview and agenda. A very disturbing agenda informs their legal and political arguments regarding immigration reform. The parallel between this movement and segregationists’ attacks on the Fourteenth Amendment in the twentieth century is clear.
Life without the Fourteenth Amendment
Tampering with the Fourteenth Amendment would violate our legal traditions, threaten hard-won civil rights victories, and destabilize the very meaning of American citizenship. It would grievously wound America’s principle of equal treatment under the law. Attempts to amend, abolish, or similarly undermine the Fourteenth Amendment’s provision regarding birthright citizenship should be rejected by lawmakers for at least five reasons:
1. It would be the first time since the infamous “three-fifths clause” that the Constitution has been written to restrict civil rights rather than expand them.
2. Altering this provision, especially through legislation, would encourage further subjecting of individuals’ rights to the political process, opening a Pandora’s Box that could significantly redefine the rights of current citizens. This would undermine the founders’ intent in creating the Bill of Rights, which places fundamental rights beyond the boundaries of simple majority rule in order to protect them against a sometimes-fickle public opinion.
3. It would strengthen the hand of nativist and racist organizations.
4. It would create a two-tiered society consisting of those with full access to the political, economic, and social institutions of the nation and those permanently excluded from them. American-born children of undocumented immigrants, for example, would be unable to obtain a legal job, a driver’s license, or financial aid for college. The result would be a class of stateless peoples—those with no legal U.S. residency or hope of legal residency, yet with no real ties to any other nation. Such people would be forced to work in underground economies and live in unstable, clandestine conditions, a situation that encourages crime and discourages becoming part of the broader American culture. It remains unclear what exactly would happen to such stateless persons if the United States were to catch and deport them, as no other country would be legally obliged to accept them.
5. Finally, there is no reason to believe that eliminating birthright citizenship would be effective in stopping or slowing illegal immigration; for there is little evidence that attaining citizenship is the main incentive for immigration to the United States. Most undocumented workers come to the United States in search of economic opportunity, with the intention of returning home. “Anchor babies” are a fictitious problem that has little actual impact on immigration trends today.
Since the founding of the nation, American citizenship has been secured and extended to new groups through relentless activism and political struggle. Attempts to reverse this progressive course should be treated suspiciously. Altering the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause would amount to redefining what it means to be an American by modifying the terms of citizenship—on unconstitutional and barely-concealed racial grounds. This in turn would open the door for further circumscriptions of citizens’ rights.
While people of good conscience may reasonably disagree over the nation’s immigration policies, efforts to tamper with the Fourteenth Amendment in order to control immigration must be definitively rejected.
More here. And here.
The Fourteenth Amendment is the very basis of American citizenship.
While such contemporary efforts to gut the Fourteenth Amendment are looked upon as political grandstanding, with virtually no possibility of gaining traction in law or in the public arena, African Americans ought to be more sober in their assessment of this growing assault upon civil right in the United States.
The following pages explain why attempts by immigration opponents to undermine the Fourteenth Amendment are unconstitutional and flirt dangerously with the undemocratic traditions of racism and xenophobia that Americans have fought so hard to dismantle. The paper begins with a brief history of the Fourteenth Amendment, discusses why anti-immigration advocates seek to dismantle a key provision of it, and explains the reasons why attempts to alter the Fourteenth Amendment should be firmly rejected. Whatever one’s position on immigration policy reform, shaking the foundations of American citizenship is the wrong way to go about achieving it. Despite the complexity of the immigration controversy, preserving the Fourteenth Amendment must be an absolutely non-negotiable aspect of immigration reform in the United States.
A Brief History
The Fourteenth Amendment states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” It was ratified in 1868 in response to the “Black Codes,” laws that the former slave states passed to prevent the newly freed men and women from choosing their professions, owning or leasing land, accessing public accommodations, and voting. The Fourteenth Amendment abolished these Codes by asserting the equal rights of all U.S. citizens. To do this, it clearly defines U.S. citizenship for the first time in the Constitution: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” This provision overturned the controversial 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford Supreme Court decision, which stated that African Americans (free or slave) were not U.S. citizens and that they were “so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”
Enacted alongside the Thirteenth and Fifteenth amendments (ratified in 1865 and 1870, respectively), these three “Civil War Amendments,” as they are sometimes called, were crucial in abolishing slavery, asserting equal citizenship rights, and resisting racial injustice. The Fourteenth Amendment, in particular, is a cornerstone of U.S. citizenship and civil rights. It lies at the heart of American freedom, guaranteeing equal standing and equal treatment under the law.
“Anchor babies” and the Fourteenth Amendment
Despite this proud history, anti-immigration organizations have launched an assault on the Fourteenth Amendment, seeking to alter one of its key clauses. These groups are demanding that the Fourteenth Amendment be amended to eliminate the clause establishing birthright citizenship, or calling for Congress to pass legislation that would effectively do the same thing.
Anti-immigration groups enthusiastically support such bills as a means to eliminate what they term “anchor babies,” a pejorative term for U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants. The term “anchor baby” refers to the speculative possibility that when such children turn 21, they will sponsor their extended families for U.S. residency and thus become an “anchor” for the entire family to reside legally in the United States. Anchor babies, critics charge, “act as an anchor that pulls the illegal alien mother and eventually a host of other relatives into permanent U.S. residency.” Anti-immigrant groups also claim that birthright citizenship provides a “perverse incentive” for foreign pregnant women to enter the United States illegally just prior to giving birth. Apocalyptic predictions inevitably follow. For example, former chairman of the House Immigration Reform Committee and former 2008 Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo (R-CO) once stated, “If we do not control immigration, legal and illegal, we will eventually reach the point where it won’t be what kind of nation we are, balkanized or united; we will have to face the fact that we are no longer a nation at all.”
Given the way these attacks on birthright citizenship threaten civil rights, it should perhaps be no surprise that they fit uncomfortably well with the long, tragic history of nativism and racial discrimination in this country. For example, in 1883 the United States passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which aimed to prevent the immigration of Chinese laborers and prohibited Chinese nationals from obtaining citizenship. (This was a temporary measure repeatedly renewed until made permanent in 1904.) The 1924 Immigration Act (better known as the National Origins Act) broadened this xenophobic exclusivity by setting immigration quotas according to national origin, capping immigration levels at two percent of a nationality’s total population living in the U.S. in 1890—a year selected because it preceded the large-scale arrival of Eastern and Southern Europeans, populations which the act deliberately sought to restrict. It was not until the Immigration Act of 1965 (also known as the Hart-Cellar Act) that the United States eliminated quotas based upon national origin and replaced it with a system tying immigration to profession and skills possessed. This legislation was enacted as a result of the civil rights movement’s efforts to end racial and ethnic discrimination—and to fully apply the Fourteenth Amendment to all citizens. But even during the dark days of blatant discrimination, birthright citizenship was still considered to be the law of the land, even by immigration opponents.
Further, many of the most prominent opponents of birthright citizenship today have expressed racist and/or xenophobic sentiments, and several of them have unsettling ties to white supremacist organizations. While it would certainly be unfair and inaccurate to generalize all opponents of birthright citizenship as racist, racially prejudiced attitudes among the leadership of this movement are well documented. A few examples follow:
■The Federation of American Immigration Reform, one of the most influential opponents of birthright citizenship, was founded by John Tanton, who has made a number of anti-Latino comments over the years. For example, in a 1986 memo he warned of a “Latin onslaught” and lamented that the American Caucasian majority would be forced to hand off their political power “to a group that is simply more fertile.”
■Mothers Against Illegal Aliens founder and president Michelle Dallacroce writes that “anchor babies” have “invaded our nation” and characterizes their very presence as a “hostile occupation” of the United States.
■The Council of Conservative Citizens (formerly the pro-segregation White Citizens Council) denounces immigration using an explicitly racist language, writing, “We believe that the U.S. is a European Country and that Americans are part of a European People. We therefore oppose the massive immigration of non-European and non-Western people in the United States that threaten to transform our nation into a non-European majority in our lifetime” (Francis 2008). The C of CC also opposes all racially mixed activities.
What these examples illustrate is that the movement against birthright citizenship is not just an attack on the Fourteenth Amendment and the great body of civil rights legislation that rests upon it, but one that is led by many persons with a racist worldview and agenda. A very disturbing agenda informs their legal and political arguments regarding immigration reform. The parallel between this movement and segregationists’ attacks on the Fourteenth Amendment in the twentieth century is clear.
Life without the Fourteenth Amendment
Tampering with the Fourteenth Amendment would violate our legal traditions, threaten hard-won civil rights victories, and destabilize the very meaning of American citizenship. It would grievously wound America’s principle of equal treatment under the law. Attempts to amend, abolish, or similarly undermine the Fourteenth Amendment’s provision regarding birthright citizenship should be rejected by lawmakers for at least five reasons:
1. It would be the first time since the infamous “three-fifths clause” that the Constitution has been written to restrict civil rights rather than expand them.
2. Altering this provision, especially through legislation, would encourage further subjecting of individuals’ rights to the political process, opening a Pandora’s Box that could significantly redefine the rights of current citizens. This would undermine the founders’ intent in creating the Bill of Rights, which places fundamental rights beyond the boundaries of simple majority rule in order to protect them against a sometimes-fickle public opinion.
3. It would strengthen the hand of nativist and racist organizations.
4. It would create a two-tiered society consisting of those with full access to the political, economic, and social institutions of the nation and those permanently excluded from them. American-born children of undocumented immigrants, for example, would be unable to obtain a legal job, a driver’s license, or financial aid for college. The result would be a class of stateless peoples—those with no legal U.S. residency or hope of legal residency, yet with no real ties to any other nation. Such people would be forced to work in underground economies and live in unstable, clandestine conditions, a situation that encourages crime and discourages becoming part of the broader American culture. It remains unclear what exactly would happen to such stateless persons if the United States were to catch and deport them, as no other country would be legally obliged to accept them.
Since the founding of the nation, American citizenship has been secured and extended to new groups through relentless activism and political struggle. Attempts to reverse this progressive course should be treated suspiciously. Altering the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause would amount to redefining what it means to be an American by modifying the terms of citizenship—on unconstitutional and barely-concealed racial grounds. This in turn would open the door for further circumscriptions of citizens’ rights.
While people of good conscience may reasonably disagree over the nation’s immigration policies, efforts to tamper with the Fourteenth Amendment in order to control immigration must be definitively rejected.
More here. And here.
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