Born in the USA and why soon that may not matter

Arab News

29-05-2025

https://arab.news/5qas3
There is a scene in the hysterically funny 2009 movie 'In the Loop' in which the bellicose US military attache Lt. Gen. George Miller, played by the late James Gandolfini, accosts Malcolm Tucker, the foul-mouthed British government spin doctor played by the Scottish actor Peter Capaldi.
In the course of a lengthy tirade, Miller denounces the general uselessness and wimpishness of England, all things English and particularly English people as exemplified by Tucker. The spin doctor essays a few ripostes about armchair generals who have never fired a weapon in anger, turns to leave, but then turns back and snarls: 'And don't ever call me ******* English again!'
Anyone with sufficient comedic talent could have written and directed the movie, but only a Scot could have written and directed that scene. The Scot in question is Armando Iannucci, a comedy genius who you may know from 'Veep,' the TV series in which he mercilessly skewered the dysfunctional incompetence of White House politics, having previously done the same for the UK with 'The Thick of It.'
His name, obviously, denotes Italian heritage, but Iannucci is very much a product of Scotland — as am I: we share a home city, Glasgow, and indeed a school, although 10 years apart. If someone were to suggest that either of us was in any way English, they would be on the receiving end of a mouthful that would put Malcolm Tucker to shame.
Taken together, nationality and citizenship create a powerful force that determines who we are as people
Ross Anderson
Nationality is, above all, an emotion. Citizenship is a bureaucratic process. Taken together, they create a powerful force that determines who we are as people. They are, for example, why Palestinians, despite oppression, persecution and a diaspora scattered to the four winds, remain resolutely and indefatigably Palestinian (and why cruel attempts to drive them out of the West Bank, and absurd attempts to do so from Gaza, are doomed to fail).
They are why, despite incomprehension in the US, there was widespread irritation in South America when the new Pope Leo was described as 'the first American pope,' despite having succeeded the proud Argentine and also proud American Pope Francis. As they say south of the Mexican border, 'todos somos Americanos' (we are all American).
You would think, therefore, that nationality and citizenship were a straightforward business, but we live in a world where increasingly they are not. Particularly in the US and Western Europe, the shutters are coming down, the barriers are going up, deportation flights are full and there are demands for borders to be closed, as those who already possess citizenship enforce the view that they would rather not be joined by anyone else.
The logic of those who oppose migration has always eluded me. Where do they think they came from in the first place? We all know, but it bears repeating for those who have clearly forgotten, that the US became the world's preeminent power wholly on the back of unlimited and uncontrolled immigration, with attempts to limit it desultory.
There were a few mostly anti-Asian rules in the late 19th century, but the immigration processing center on Ellis Island was not established until 1892 and migrant quotas and the US Border Patrol had to wait until 1924 — by which time the US was already on a roll. Nor were the early settlers squeamish about their methods: the predecessors of today's US citizens ethnically cleansed the indigenous population from their ancestral land and claimed it as their own because it was their 'manifest destiny' to do so, a scenario that observers of the West Bank today may find depressingly familiar.
Since 1898, any child born in the US has been automatically entitled to US citizenship, regardless of the legal status of the child's parents. In almost the first act of the first day of his second term as president, Donald Trump signed an executive order directing that the children of immigrants would no longer receive citizenship unless one of their parents was naturalized or had a green card. Trump did not do that on a whim: polling overwhelmingly suggests that, after retail price inflation, an 'invasion' of undocumented migrants is the issue that most concerns Americans.
This is a curious phenomenon, and a paradox. Anti-immigrant sentiment is least fervent in states where you might expect to find it — California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, all of which share a border with Mexico on the main migrant route from the south. The very good reason is that business, industry and agriculture in those states would collapse without a steady supply of migrant labor, legal or otherwise, and employers are not inclined to ask too many awkward questions.
Particularly in the US and Western Europe, deportation flights are full and there are demands for borders to be closed
Ross Anderson
To find genuine anger over illegal immigration, you need to go to the old industrial Midwest of Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — where factory workers from Venezuela are few and far between. There are echoes here of Brexit, the 2016 vote for the UK to leave the EU, which was fueled largely by demands for more control over immigration — demands that came mostly from parts of England where actual migrants are as rare as hen's teeth.
With his attempt to end birthright citizenship, Trump has effectively tried to overturn the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, adopted in 1868 and reinforced by the Supreme Court 30 years later, which states: 'All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.'
Most US legal scholars consider that to be unequivocal and Trump's executive order has been successfully challenged and overturned in most states. The Supreme Court is currently hearing arguments from the Trump administration that a judge may block a presidential order only in their own jurisdiction and not nationwide, but that is a technical issue that need not concern us here. What seems inevitable is that, probably early next year, the court will be asked to rule on the central issue itself — birthright citizenship.
On the face of it, it seems a simple decision: the 14th Amendment could not be clearer. But one of the thornier tasks given to the Supreme Court is to interpret laws regulating circumstances and behavior that were markedly different when the laws were written from what they are now, and to judge what the framers of those laws might have thought had they known then what we know now. For example, an estimated 20,000 women a year, mostly from China, travel to the US specifically to give birth there and gain citizenship for their children. 'Birth tourism' was hardly a thing in 1868: should it be encouraged now?
Supporting his executive order is certainly what Trump will expect the court to do, but no one ever made money betting on how a Supreme Court justice will rule — not even the president who nominated them. The judges have a long history of applying their own interpretation of the law, not the political views that a president thought he was sending them to the bench to implement.
Either way, our whole understanding of nationality and citizenship may be about to change: watch this space.