To the editor:
Donald Trump is at it again. Over the weekend, he displayed his ignorance of the Constitution (this time over the 14th Amendment) by vowing to end birthright citizenship “on Day One.” I still don’t know how he will (again) swear to uphold a document he obviously hasn’t read and does not understand.
I am a first-generation American, a baby boomer born to immigrant parents after World War II. My mother’s immigration status has been a bit murky. She always told me, “I came in on my father’s papers.” And I know that she received some kind of retroactive confirmation of her citizenship later in life. She held a U.S. passport, voted, and received Social Security benefits, so whatever was needed was apparently done correctly.
But I wouldn’t want Stephen Miller or any of Trump’s lackeys to be looking at her—and therefore my—citizenship status. I am a committed opponent of Trump’s, a donor to his opponents, and a card-carrying member of the ACLU and donor to ProPublica. I am a registered Democrat and have voted accordingly for over 50 years. I am sure people like me will wind up on some enemies list.
I have a birth certificate confirming the date/location of my birth in New York City. It is all the confirmation I need of my precious American citizenship. And now Trump plans to take that away from me. Yes, I know that it would require a Constitutional amendment, or at minimum some bizarre twisted court order, but do any of us doubt he will at least try to shut down birthright citizenship?
And to those who want to reassure me that I am not the “kind of people” Trump is talking about, I would just refer them to the sad history of that phrase from 1930s Germany.
Mal Wasserman
Great Barrington
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