Birthright citizenship, sending Haitians back: America no longer for ‘huddled masses'

Miami Herald

2 days ago

On Friday, America felt less American, with the U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing, for now, the end of birthright citizenship for children of visa holders and undocumented immigrants in some states, along with the Trump administration's announcement it was ending protections for roughly 500,000 Haitians who will be at risk of returning to a country with no functioning government.
America, it seems, is no longer the country that welcomes 'your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.'
The Trump administration's justification for ending Temporary Protection Status for Haiti flies in the face of reason. The Department of Homeland Security wrote: 'The environmental situation in Haiti has improved enough that it is safe for Haitian citizens to return home,' the Miami Herald reported.
Really?
This a country where armed gangs control up to 90% of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and are spreading their ruthless power to neighboring areas. At least one in 10 Haitians has been displaced by deadly gang violence, according to the Herald. Nearly half the population faces acute hunger.
The situation in the Caribbean nation has only gotten worse since the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in 2021, with institutions crumbling and horrific acts of violence taking place in plain sight. Several members of a congregation were beheaded inside a church in the rice-growing community of Préval last month, victims of local self-defense brigades that have been formed to fight organized crime, the Herald reported.
The situation in Haiti has become so dire that the U.S. Department of State advises Americans not to visit the country 'due to kidnapping, crime, civil unrest and limited health care.'
How can the Trump administration say Haiti's 'situation' is improved? The same questions lingers for Venezuela and Afghanistan, countries that also lost TPS under President Trump. Venezuela is still a dictatorship under Nicolas Maduro, and Afghanistan is still run by the Taliban.
TPS holders are not foreign invaders, as Trump will have many Americans believe, but mostly people trying to escape terrible situations in their native countries. Unfortunately, the president was successful at convincing voters that immigration represents a net negative for the U.S., and every migrant allowed in this country is taking something from an American. Haitians, in particular, were targeted with vitriol during the 2024 elections with Trump and his allies repeating the baseless claim they were eating people's pets in Ohio.
This nativist rhetoric ignores the employers who rely on TPS holders to perform jobs that most Americans won't do in our agricultural fields, restaurant kitchens and other businesses. It ignores the countless migrants and their children who made good on their opportunities by starting businesses, attending college and building their own American dream.
Another 500,000 Haitians, Cubans, Venezuelans and Nicaragua are also at risk of deportation after the Supreme Court allowed the administration to revoke a Biden-era humanitarian parole program, for now, while a case is litigated. When will it stop?
On Friday, the Supreme Court delivered another blow to country's system of checks and balances, allowing Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants in parts of the country to stand for now. The Court granted a request by the Trump administration to throw out national injunctions by lower court judges that preserved the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship while legal challenges to the executive order move forward.
The 6-3 ruling means the injunctions blocking Trump's order only cover the jurisdictions where plaintiffs filed their lawsuits, leaving the rest of the country, including Florida, subject to Trump's order. This creates a bizarre patchwork of regulations where, for now, children born to the estimated half-a-million undocumented residents in living Florida, according to the federal government, don't have the same right to citizenship as children born under the same circumstances in Massachusetts, one of the states were a lawsuit was filed.
If the U.S. Supreme Court eventually allows Trump to permanently end birthright citizenship, the result will be more undocumented immigrants who are born in the U.S. living in the shadows, their opportunities for advancement diminished. How does that help the U.S., especially when U.S. birthrates have dropped to concerning levels?
The point seems to be exclusion and, for the sake of it, a nationalist agenda that's above accountability. Will America look back one day and regret this?
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