Pro-life groups need to defend birthright citizenship

2024/12/14 Leave a comment

Interesting take (but then again, Catholic organizations tend to support more generous immigration and related policies, unlike Evangelicals):

President-elect Donald Trump stated he plans to end birthright citizenship, which is currently guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. The pro-life movement, which is as significant a part of the GOP base as the anti-immigrant caucus, needs to step up and oppose any attempt to end the conferral of citizenship on those born in the United States.

The foundational argument of the pro-life movement is that all life is sacred, and that once you start parsing who is, and who is not, entitled to certain rights, you are halfway down a slippery moral slope. All human beings, as human beings, should enjoy the same rights as every other human being.

The relationship of abortion policy to immigration policy might seem counterintuitive. The 14th Amendment doesn’t help the pro-life cause. It refers to “All persons born or naturalized in the United States …” Pro-choice groups argue that a human being only has a right to life once it is born, but once born, the rights that are conferred on the person are sacrosanct.

Those who drafted and enacted the 14th Amendment were not addressing the moral and legal issues surrounding abortion, and they didn’t have sonograms in 1866 when members of Congress began drafting the amendment after President Andrew Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Act that year.

The drafters of the 14th Amendment aimed to extend the equal protection of the laws to those formerly enslaved. They knew that the framers of the original Constitution had it wrong when they decreed that slaves only counted as three-fifths of a person for purposes of representation in the Congress. They knew that the founders had been wrong about slavery entirely. They knew that this diminishment of the humanity of those who had been enslaved was an affront to our nation’s foundational claims about human freedom and legal equality.

The pro-life movement has always been constructed on this deeper moral concern, that no person should have their humanity diminished, even if the movement has failed to live up to this high ideal. The source of human rights is our civilizational belief in transcendent human dignity. Virtually every religion expresses this belief in some way. Ours expresses it in terms of the imago Dei, the belief that every person is made in the image of likeness of God. Every time the pro-life movement ignores other threats to this God-given human dignity, it weakens its credibility.

“Catholic social thought starts with the dignity of each person and the whole person,” Dylan Corbett, executive director of the Hope Border Institute which advocates for immigrants, told me. “This is the bedrock of the church’s commitment to the poor, the unborn and the vulnerable, without distinction. In the coming months, the Trump administration’s targeting of our parishioners, neighbors and the essential workers in our communities simply because of immigration status will test the credibility of our moral witness.”

Kristen Day, director of Democrats for Life of America agrees. “Pro-life principles don’t end where Donald Trump’s pet projects begin,” she told me via email. “Remaining silent on the issue of birthright citizenship would betray our movement’s highest values because there is nothing pro-life about ending it. Life begins at conception, but it doesn’t end at birth.”

To be clear, even a democracy seriously engaged in working for equality will need to draw distinctions, to discriminate, between people. We all know a precocious 16- or 17-year-old who is more mature than some 20-somethings we know, but unless you are 18, you don’t get to vote. We wouldn’t want the government devising some kind of test that decides who is worthy to vote, and who isn’t, and so we set an arbitrary cutoff. That arbitrary cutoff is applied universally.

In terms of abortion policy, conception, viability and birth are the usual cutoffs, and there is an argument to be made for any of the three. Only the first coheres with Catholic teaching, and in most pluralistic democracies, the cutoff is at some point between conception and viability.

As a culture, a society and a polity, we need to learn how to think more deeply, and less arbitrarily, about where we draw such lines.

The idea that a person is a citizen of the place where he or she is born is a bulwark against any attempt to discriminate unjustly. A good way to sniff if a particular discrimination is just or unjust is to ask whether it is universal. Birthright citizenship is universal: It applies to everyone born here.

This political linkage of immigration and abortion cuts both ways. Pro-immigrant arguments would have greater moral cogency to many Americans if they were put forward by people who are committed to protecting the lives of unborn children, or at least not indifferent to the dignity of those unborn children. Given the polarization of the country, that moral linkage is not apparent to most and will be dismissed by many. Still, moral coherence eventually wins out most of the time.

At this moment in our nation’s political history, the pro-life movement should rally around the cause of defending birthright citizenship.

Source: Pro-life groups need to defend birthright citizenship

Filed under Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship, Trump administration Tagged with , , ,

Trump’s Worthwhile Canadian Initiative vs New Trump administration policy is eugenics for immigrants

2019/05/21 Leave a comment

Two very contrasting views of the Trump administration’s immigration proposals, starting with the National Review in favour:

Donald Trump has associated himself with the radical idea that the United States should have a legal-immigration system like that of Canada.

He unveiled an immigration plan on Thursday that would emphasize skills, moving us closer to the Canadian model from our current, foolishly monomaniacal focus on family reunification.

The problem with letting immigrants bring in all sort of relatives is that it makes the immigration system random, and effectively takes control over picking and choosing who will come here out of our hands. The Trump plan would limit family immigration to immediate family — spouses and minor children — and eliminate the visa lottery, which is just as arbitrary as it sounds.

Instead, the emphasis would be on a point system and higher-skilled immigrants with extraordinary talents, professional vocations, and academic accomplishments.

The plan also includes an array of welcome enforcement measures, although it’s not clear yet if it includes the most important of all, an E-Verify system for employers that would do much to turn off the jobs magnet drawing illegal immigrants here.

There is a lot to commend in the plan. It would be a significant step toward making our immigration system more rational. With so many people around the world desperate to come here, it is insane that we aren’t choosing the immigrants who best serve our interests. Under the plan, we would favor the immigrants best-suited to thriving in a 21st-century economy, and English and civics tests would select for immigrants with the best chance of easily assimilating.

It is something of a breakthrough to have an administration that considers the interests of American workers in formulating immigration policy and doesn’t want to continue to flood the lower end of the labor market with greater numbers of low-skilled immigrants, a persistent feature of so-called comprehensive immigration reforms.

Our complaint is that the plan doesn’t call for lower numbers of legal immigrants given the historic wave of immigration that has continued unabated for decades now. But the enforcement measures, especially if they include e-Verify, should reduce the flow of new illegal immigrants and diminish the current illegal population, reducing the level of immigration overall.

Also, it would have been better if Trump had come into office with a plan along these lines ready to be immediately written into legislation when Republicans controlled Congress. If so, with the right horse-trading and a deft touch, it might have been possible to get important reforms written and signed into law.

As it is, this is largely a campaign document, and a commendable one.

Source: Trump’s Worthwhile Canadian Initiative

Michael Sean Winters in the National Catholic Reporter takes a strong stand, excessively so IMO, on “merit-based” approaches. Labelling it as “eugenics” is so over the top that it undermines a more reasonable approach that has a blended approach between economic, family and refugee immigrants (as in Canada):

Last week, the estuary where politics and religion mingle was dominated by discussions about abortion, and I will have more to say on that later this week. But, today, I would like to focus on President Donald Trump’s rollout of a new approach to immigration policy. One of the central objectives of the policy proposal will be to implement a “merit-based” system for admitting immigrants legally, rather than the current system which prioritizes family members of those already here.

Ironically, Trump entrusted the policy rollout on Capitol Hill to a member of his own family, Jared Kushner, who met with Senators May 16 and left them with the impression he is clueless when it comes to the issue. The Washington Post cited an individual “familiar with the meeting” who said: “He’s in his own little world. He didn’t give many details about what was in [his plan]. … And there were a number of instances where people had to step in and answer questions because he couldn’t.” Maybe young Kushner should go back to making peace in the Mideast.

The idea of turning to a “merit-based” system that prioritizes migrants with special skills and high levels of education is already supported by some hardline Republican senators. Sens. Tom Cotton, of Arkansas, David Perdue of Georgia, and Josh Hawley of Missouri introduced the RAISE Act last month. Their proposal also reduced legal immigration over time, something Trump apparently does not want to do at this time. But, the core idea is the same.

“Our current immigration system is broken and is not meeting the needs of our growing economy,” said Perdue in a press release announcing the introduction of the legislation. “If we want to continue to be the global economic leader, we have to welcome the best and brightest from around the world who wish to come to the United States legally to work and make a better life for themselves. This will require a skills-based immigration system that is pro-growth and pro-worker. The RAISE Act is proven to work and is still the only plan that responds to the needs of our economy, while preserving quality jobs and wages for American workers.”

See, the needs of the “the economy” are more important than the needs of any families that might wish to be reunited. Or, so say these “pro-family” senators, two of whom garnered a 100 percent rating from the Family Research Council last year. Hawley was not yet a senator, but I would be willing to bet he will earn a 100 percent rating this session.

One of the cornerstones of Catholic social doctrine is that the family and its rights precede the state and its rights. Indeed, all four pillars of Catholic social doctrine — human dignity, the common good, solidarity and subsidiarity — rise or fall based on how a society fosters family life.

There is no constitutional requirement that a public policy cohere with Catholic moral teaching, to be sure. But, let’s call this “merit-based” system what it is: Eugenics for immigrants. In its earlier iteration, eugenics aimed to prevent those deemed to lack “merit” from procreating. “Three generations of imbeciles are enough,” thundered Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in 1927, before eugenics got a bad name at Auschwitz.

Now, corporate America gets to play the part of deciding who does and does not get to be treated with that equal human dignity both the Gospel and the Constitution take as their most basic premise. Corporate America tells the government what kind of foreign workers it needs, and the government lets those workers move to the front of the line. Why should the needs of the impersonal “economy,” or the needs of the corporate titans who hide behind economic theories, take precedence over our moral values? Christian moral theology recognizes that the people with the greatest claim on society and government are those in need, not those with special skills. An immigrant is a human person. Is the president and his party saying that the proper assessment of “merit” is an economic assessment, not a moral one? What about an unborn immigrant child? Do they lack the “merit” human dignity confers?

The U.S. bishops were quick to put out a letter, signed by four relevant committee chairmen, voicing their opposition to a bill that would confer equal rights to members of the LGBT community. The statement they did issue is totally inadequate.

“While we appreciate that the President is looking to address problems in our immigration system, we oppose proposals that seek to curtail family-based immigration and create a largely ‘merit-based’ immigration system,” said Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the bishops’ conference. “Families are the foundation of our faith, our society, our history, and our immigration system. As Pope Francis notes: ‘Family is the place in which we are formed as persons. Each family is a brick that builds society.’ ”

I do not recall them acknowledging the good faith of those who support the Equality Act. And, really, what is there to “appreciate” about this president’s attempts “to address problems in our immigration system”? After all, it is heavy with racism and, in the event, likely to affect mostly our coreligionists from Central America. Many Catholics come to Washington every January to protest Roe v. Wade. Will they come to Washington in similar numbers to protest this social Darwinism?

One expects this kind of morally asinine behavior from the president, but I confess I am surprised that so many conservative members of Congress support this kind of “merit-based” immigration system. They are not stupid people. They are not immoral people. They are people for whom a commitment to Christian faith, and the values that flow therefrom, has been wildly distorted by its entanglement with the Republican Party. They are equally a threat to what is best about our American experiment and most precious about our Christian heritage. This embrace of eugenics for immigrants is only the latest evidence of how great that threat is.

Source: New Trump administration policy is eugenics for immigrants

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