The Immigrant Other

This country has been here before — a time when fears of the immigrant other can be exploited by a vocal portion of the populace. This often occurs during economic distress and, no coincidence, during elections.

Driven by such ugly terms as "anchor babies," the wedge this year surrounds immigration generally, but specifically the children of illegal immigrants who, born in this country, are United States citizens.

They are citizens by virtue of longstanding practice. Persons born here of, say, European parents in 1810, were considered U.S. citizens just as children born here in 2010 are.

They are citizens also by virtue of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which, attempting to stave off disenfranchisement of newly freed slaves and recognizing this longstanding practice of birthright citizenship, says it plainly: "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."

Those who advocate repealing birthright citizenship look to this phrase: "subject to the jurisdiction of." Immigrants have allegiance to other countries, they argue, so their children aren't automatically citizens — a tortured reading.

The words simply mean they are subject to U.S. laws while here, everything from those proscribing felonies to those governing deportation.

They are citizens by virtue of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling — in 1898 and affirmed since then.

Yet energized by Arizona's anti-immigrant Senate Bill 1070 — key portions of which were blocked by a federal judge recently — members of the U.S. Senate and House are again raising that fear of the immigrant other. They want to deny the constitutional right of birthright citizenship — part of an un-American strategy of "deportation through attrition," another way of saying we will make some people's lives hell.

It is but the latest iteration of an impulse in this land of immigrants to deem the latest wave as just too foreign, too threatening, too numerous. And, in reasoning that subverts fact and logic, a drain on resources.

Immigrants always have come to work and build, today's Mexican immigrants no less than yesteryear's northern Wisconsin Norwegians. Those making this anti-immigrant argument view today's immigrants as convenient — the perfect pawns with which to sow fear and division in order to gain votes.

A land of immigrants should understand the terrible flaws of this argument. A party that fathered the 14th Amendment should understand them best of all.

REPRINTED FROM THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL.

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