Sunday, September 02, 2018

Trump strips more citizenships

Last month I wrote about how the Trump administration is moving to rescind the citizenship of naturalized U.S. citizens.  Now it is doing the same thing to natural-born citizens (but, of course, only to natural-born citizens with poor parents and brown skin).

I'm not sure what is more disturbing, that this is happening, or that it hasn't gotten more attention.  Because once you start to strip people of their citizenship, you have gone full-fascist.

6 comments:

Don Geddis said...

No worries, this is surely the bottom: Political Scientists Reassure Americans That Stripping Minorities Of Citizenship Usually Where Descent Into Fascism Peters Out

(From The Onion)

Ron said...

What a relief. I was starting to worry.

:-(

Publius said...

There has not been a "surge" of passport denials, nor has a new policy been enacted that would result in one. The opposite is true:

Domestic Issuance/Denials Along the Southern Border Involving Potentially Fraudulent Birth Documents Since 2012

2018 YTD denials are the lowest of the past 5 years.

#FakeNews

Ron said...

@Publius:

The rate of passport denials is not at issue. What is at issue is *retroactively stripping U.S. citizens of their citizenship* because they were not born in a hospital, or because of a minor discrepancy in their naturalization applications. That is unprecedented.

I have been a citizen of the U.S. for 44 years, having inherited my parent's naturalization when I was 10. But I could potentially lose my citizenship tomorrow if the government found some discrepancy in my parent's paperwork.

And in a country where the president himself rose to power by questioning the authenticity of a birth certificate *issued by a hospital*, no one is safe. (Well, OK, I'm probably safe because I'm white and speak English without an accent. But no dark-skinned person is safe.)

Publius said...

That's not what the article you cited describes. It discusses cases of birth certificate fraud in the 1990's. Babies delivered by Jorge Treviño and being examined, as are babies delivered by a particular midwife.

It's important for the government to detect and punish fraud, isn't it?

Ron said...

> It's important for the government to detect and punish fraud, isn't it?

Sure, but the people being stripped of their citizenships have not committed any fraud. They are not even being *accused* of committing fraud.