Citizenship Is a Privilege

Rights come with responsibilities

Happy Independence Day! In honor of America’s semiquincentennial, I’ve spent this week revisiting some of my favorite essays and speeches in American history. But first, the news of the day:

What I’m Thinking About

I wish I could cheer this week’s SCOTUS decision upholding birthright citizenship. The principle at the core of the majority opinion in Trump v. Barbara is a noble one: that those born in the United States have the right to call this land home, and live in it as full participants in the country’s political life.

But the problem is that the doctrine of birthright citizenship presupposes a number of conditions that aren’t true today. Birthright citizenship only works in a system in which legal immigration is kept at a manageable level, and illegal immigration is prevented. It only works when immigrants assimilate: when they become Americans in the fullest sense, integrating into our culture and civic life. And it only works when they become productive members of society, as opposed to dependents on the state. The 14th Amendment was crafted before the creation of the modern welfare state and the advent of the commercial jet age. Its drafters could not have imagined the situation we face today: unprecedented and unsustainable levels of immigration, often from hostile cultures, by people who have no intention of integrating into American society, and who are more likely than not to rely on welfare.

As Justice Thomas wrote in his dissent, the citizenship clause was never meant to include the children of temporary residents with no loyalty to the United States. As it is, the Court has given the green light to bad actors around the world who see American prosperity as a resource to exploit, not a project to which they will contribute.

The doctrine of birthright citizenship presupposes conditions that aren’t true today.

What I’m Reading

True Americanism

Teddy Roosevelt insisted that citizenship was earned through allegiance and assimilation. It was never meant to be conferred by accident of birth. His essay reads almost as a rebuke to today’s Court: it’s a bracing reminder that citizenship is a privilege that belongs only to those who are “in very truth Americans, [working together] for the honor and greatness of our common country.”

“The Boys of Pointe du Hoc”

President Reagan delivered this speech in Normandy on the 40th anniversary of D-Day. It’s a powerful recounting of the courage of the American Rangers who scaled the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc under heavy fire to begin the liberation of Europe. It’s also a reminder of the faith that underwrote that courage: the faith in God, and in the country, that it took to win the war.

What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind

Jennifer Senior’s Pulitzer-winning 2021 feature in The Atlantic is one of the most moving pieces of journalism I’ve read in my life. Nearly a quarter century after the attacks on September 11th, 2001, it’s easy to remember the events of that day in the abstract: the ideological forces behind the attacks, the thousands of lives lost, the wars that followed. Senior’s portrait of the legacy of one young man who was killed at the World Trade Center is a devastating reminder of the true scale of the loss, and how much is represented by each and every name on the list of the dead.

What Caught My Eye This Week

In better court news, SCOTUS ruled on June 25th that the government can turn back migrants at the border without entertaining asylum claims. It’s a step in the right direction. Asylum was never meant to be a loophole around the normal immigration process, but it has been exploited as such for years.

The California Faculty Association, the California State University’s 29,000-member teacher’s union, is trying to repeal rules that restricted anti-Israel encampments and antisemitic harassment on campuses. Even if the CFA fails, it’s hard to imagine being a Jewish student on a California campus, knowing that your teachers are trying to roll back rules that protect you.

What Concerns Me

The recent primary results out of New York are alarming. Three far-left candidates, backed by Mayor Mamdani, are now all but certain to head to Congress after the general election in November. All three are vocally anti-Israel. The red-green alliance is becoming more visible and outspoken in American politics, at a time when patriotism is at a record low. Increasingly, in major cities across the country, being anti-American is a politically successful strategy. Among the celebrations this weekend, we mustn’t lose sight of our nation’s vulnerability, or forget our responsibility to defend it.