The Dubious Origins of Trump's Immigration Scheme
Viewed through the lens of America's civil rights history, Donald Trump's new call to repeal birthright citizenship chimes with an ominous ring.
Spoiler alert: It sounds like racism.
It sounds like the Supreme Court's declaration in 1857 that African-Americans were "so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."
That quote comes from the 7-2 decision written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney in the notorious Dred Scott case. It declared that Scott, a slave, could not be a citizen because he was African-American and, slave or free, had no standing to sue for his freedom in court.
I bring that up because outrage over that awful decision led to the Civil War and the 14th Amendment, with which Trump now wants to tinker.
The amendment was passed in 1868 at the urging of Republican lawmakers to overrule the Dred Scott decision in honor of Abraham Lincoln. Now it is Republican Trump in his first position paper as frontrunner for the Grand Old Party's presidential nomination, who wants to water it down.
Trump's beef is with the Citizenship Clause, which 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."
The elegant simplicity of that clause troubles Trump, who attacks "birthright citizenship" as "the biggest magnet for illegal immigration."
Actually, the biggest magnets for immigrants continue to be what they always were -- jobs, freedom and an opportunity to succeed. As jobs in this country declined in recent years, for example, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reports that illegal immigration also declined.
But immigrants and other minorities offer an inviting target for demagogic populists, especially during times of economic hardship and sagging confidence in public institutions like government.
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