As 250th Approaches: Who Is an American? | The American Spectator

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The U.S. Supreme Court this week heard oral arguments about the validity of President Donald Trump’s effort to strip away birthright citizenship, with justices reportedly appearing skeptical about the administration’s underlying argument. Process-wise, it also seems dubious to implement such a wide-ranging change to long-standing legal precedent via an executive order — but the broader question is what this might all mean for defining what it means to be an American.

Perhaps the most unusual exchange took place between Solicitor General John Sauer and Justice Neil Gorsuch. The justice asked Sauer if Native Americans would qualify as birthright citizens under the Trump definition. Sauer was unclear, saying they are citizens by statute. Gorsuch pressed him on the question. Sauer said: “I think the clear understanding that everybody agrees in the congressional debates is that the children of tribal Indians are not birthright.”

If the citizenship of Native Americans is hazy, then it’s clear the administration is willing to upend some of the most fundamental ideas we hold about citizenship. It doesn’t help when the Department of Homeland Security posts a meme titled, “America After 100 Million Deportations.” It might have been a joke — albeit one repeated by a GOP candidate at the Conservative Political Action Conference — but it certainly builds unease against a backdrop of ICE’s increasingly aggressive immigration roundups. Such ideas threaten the fabric of our nation.

Few Americans oppose deportations of, say, criminal immigrants — but 100 million people is nearly one-third of the U.S. population and would include 86 million more people than the estimated number of illegal immigrants. On MAGA social media, it’s commonplace to read such flippant talk, with populists claiming citizenship is more than a piece of paper. It’s fair to argue that being a good citizen involves acceptance of a variety of civic responsibilities and norms — but there’s no way to enforce attitudes. If you have a U.S. passport, you’re as fully a citizen as anyone else.

As a libertarian, my view on immigration no doubt are much different than the views of most conservative and populist readers of this publication. But some of what I read online these days regarding immigration is gussied-up bigotry (and some of it isn’t even gussied up). There are many reasonable arguments for restricting immigration, but one of the problems with MAGA is it refuses to admonish the Right’s extremists. As a result, noxious ideas infiltrate a movement that once championed the nation’s highest ideals.

One of these worst ideas, but increasingly popular, is the concept of a Heritage American. Politico offers a reasonable definition of the term:

Like a lot of phrases drawn from internet discourse, the precise definition of ‘Heritage America’ can get a bit fuzzy around the edges, and its exact meaning remains the subject of some debate. But in its most basic sense, the phrase refers to present-day Americans who trace their ancestral roots to the colonial period, or shortly thereafter. … But at its most fundamental … ‘Heritage American’ refers to the offspring of the Anglo-Protestant and Scotch-Irish settlers — in other words, the white people — who populated the original colonies before heading west to settle the American frontier.

It has its defenders. One writer in the American Conservative refers to the above Politico passage, but argues that the concept (which also is embraced by some people whose heritage doesn’t go back very far) “offers bright young people a compelling right-wing framework to champion immigration restriction, hostility to DEI, and genuine patriotism.” He criticizes liberal journalists for viewing it as racist. Certainly, many liberal journalists find almost anything non-progressive to be racist — but in this case these journalists are more realistic than populist-Right intellectuals.

After reading self-identified Heritage Americans on social media, it seems obvious that the term often has disturbing implications. It’s naïve to see it primarily as a banal reference used by people who are interested in the nation’s historical origins, like some modern-day Daughters of the American Revolution committee. Heritage American implies that Americans who trace their lineage back to America’s founders are more genuine Americans, whereas descendants from later generations of immigrants are lesser Americans. I recall one social media chart that assessed the American-ness of people based on when their ancestors arrived here.

Some of the best — and proudest — Americans I know are immigrants and some of the worst have impressive family trees. Prior to the Trump era, conservatives had broadly accepted the idea that being an American was based more on a creed, culture, and social conventions than one’s ethnic heritage. The country obviously was founded by specific groups of people from Europe, but our nation generally avoided the divisive blood-and-soil nonsense common in the Old Country. Conservatives used to agree wholeheartedly with the words of Ronald Reagan, delivered in 1989:

Since this is the last speech that I will give as president, I think it’s fitting to leave one final thought, an observation about a country which I love. It was stated best in a letter I received not long ago. A man wrote me and said: ‘You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.’

The libertarian Cato Institute’s Alex Nowrasteh noted, “Many progressive organizations tore themselves apart arguing about who had greater status by virtue of victimhood as judged by the tenets of wokism and intersectionality.” But he found the Heritage American concept to be the “the right-wing equivalent of the woke.” Indeed. Instead of echoing the Left’s divisive tactics, the Right should return to the idea eloquently espoused by Reagan.

That doesn’t preclude a serious debate about immigration and assimilation. But as the nation celebrates its semiquincentennial in particularly turbulent political times, we should all at least agree that anyone who is now a citizen is an American of equal standing.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at [email protected].

READ MORE:

Stop Foreign Censorship Threats

California Fails to Deliver on Another Promise

Maybe the Pension Mess Can Go on Forever