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Donald Trump’s nativist bandwagon
When we lived in Moscow, people used to ask my wife and me, “Who are you by nationality?”
“Americans,” we’d say.Invariably the response would come: “Yes, but who are you really?”
Russia, you see, is a kind of melting pot, like the United States, but ethnicities don’t melt in quite the same way. People consider each other first as Armenians, or Tatars, or Jews (yes, “Jewish” is deemed a nationality), and only second as Russian citizens.
That is the kind of thinking that Donald Trump, and the Republican presidential candidates who are pathetically jumping on his nativist bandwagon, would bring to this country.
Trump would abolish birthright citizenship: the principle, embedded in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, that anyone born in the United States is an American, no matter the legal status of his or her parents. Sen. Ted Cruz promptly claimed he’d always opposed birthright citizenship, too, a claim the Houston Chronicle quickly disproved. Bobby Jindal and Ben Carson joined in, as did Scott Walker, though he didn’t seem entirely sure. Jeb Bush stayed admirably aloof from the mob.
“Americans,” we’d say.Invariably the response would come: “Yes, but who are you really?”
Russia, you see, is a kind of melting pot, like the United States, but ethnicities don’t melt in quite the same way. People consider each other first as Armenians, or Tatars, or Jews (yes, “Jewish” is deemed a nationality), and only second as Russian citizens.
That is the kind of thinking that Donald Trump, and the Republican presidential candidates who are pathetically jumping on his nativist bandwagon, would bring to this country.
Trump would abolish birthright citizenship: the principle, embedded in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, that anyone born in the United States is an American, no matter the legal status of his or her parents. Sen. Ted Cruz promptly claimed he’d always opposed birthright citizenship, too, a claim the Houston Chronicle quickly disproved. Bobby Jindal and Ben Carson joined in, as did Scott Walker, though he didn’t seem entirely sure. Jeb Bush stayed admirably aloof from the mob.
Whole editorial by the Washington Post's Fred Hiatt here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-america-citizenship-trumps-tribe/2015/08/23/51be75da-481b
I agree with the writer: "Birthright citizenship isn’t a problem at all. It’s one of the things that makes America great."
x-posted from GD.
