All men are not created equal
The American oligarchy’s attack on birthright citizenship
1 November 2018
The Trump administration’s proposal to end birthright citizenship for all people born on United States soil, enshrined in the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, is another milestone in the assault on democratic rights.
With this move, the American oligarchy is repudiating the basic democratic principle upon which the American republic was founded, embodied in the Declaration of Independence’s proclamation that “all men are created equal.” If the American president can, by executive fiat, strike out the 14th Amendment, what is to stop him from overturning the entire Bill of Rights, which guarantees free speech, protection from unreasonable search and seizure, due process, and the right to counsel, among other fundamental protections?
Trump’s proposal, which comes in the final days of the midterm election campaign, is a provocation by the administration and its fascist staffers aimed at whipping up xenophobic sentiments and creating a constituency for a right-wing extra-constitutional movement. Such a movement is deemed necessary to implement Trump’s pro-corporate, pro-war, anti-immigrant agenda.
The impact of rescinding birthright citizenship on the working class and on immigrants would be disastrous. It would place 300,000 infants born in the US to noncitizen parents at risk of detention and deportation each year.
It would produce an underclass of immigrant families afraid to send their children to school, give birth in hospitals, or send their sick children to the doctor’s office. Millions of children would become stateless, lacking citizenship in any country. Slum districts and even walled ghettos with third world, apartheid conditions would become…