Being An American Means Nothing
Their children may grow up physically present in the U.S., but they are undoubtedly spiritually foreign.
Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This week, I discuss American citizenship and whether that has any meaning.
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When I am writing my newsletter or my column for the website, I typically put on my headphones and listen to a podcast. I don’t know why it helps me formulate my thoughts into a coherent message, but it does. Last week, instead of a podcast, I listened to the oral arguments at the Supreme Court over the birthright citizenship case currently being decided. For the first time in a while, it did the opposite. In fact, the entire exercise was frustrating beyond belief.
I don’t want to be a doomsday pundit who claims that the case has already been decided. Still, it feels pretty clear to me that a majority of the justices seemed inclined to vote in favor of upholding the idea that anyone born in America, regardless of the circumstances, is an American citizen.
Justice Alito seemed to be one of the few Supreme Court justices who was worried about the ramifications of allowing such a broad interpretation of American citizenship. He asked the lawyer arguing for the challengers, Cecillia Wang, about the meaning of “not subject to any foreign power” and whether it could exclude children born in the U.S. to foreign nationals, including those whose parents entered illegally or whose home countries impose obligations like military service. Something like this seems like an obvious issue that would create a potential divided allegiance between their parents’ birth country and the U.S.
Wang’s response throughout her arguments was that case precedent and common-law tradition established near-universal birthright citizenship for those born on U.S. soil, with narrow exceptions only for children of diplomats.
I couldn’t figure out what was more depressing to me: the fact that the highest court in the U.S. was filled with judges who seemingly agreed with her or that there were citizens in my own country who would actively fight for this to be true.
And then, as if God was giving Americans a preview of what is to come, two days after the Supreme Court heard the birthright citizenship case, DHS arrested two children of illegal immigrants and their parents.
Two US-born siblings, Alen and Ann Mary Zheng, were accused of planting a failed IED at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. Their parents, Qiu Qin Zou and Jia Zhang Zheng, illegally entered the U.S. in 1993 and were served deportation orders in 1998, but remained in the U.S. until their children reportedly tried to bomb a U.S. military base.
According to the left, Alen and Ann Mary are U.S. citizens, despite Ann Mary being arrested while returning from a trip to China (her parents’ home country) and her brother, Alen, supposedly still being in China. It’s insanity.
Americans often talk about the U.S. as if it has magic soil that automatically transforms a person’s soul into a liberty-loving U.S. patriot. I think this is because we love this country so much. Its unique formation ignites a sense of pride and optimism found nowhere else in the world. But this is exactly why we have to be more honest with ourselves about what it actually means to be an American citizen.
Our first step is to admit that there is nothing in the soil that automatically turns a Chinese, Mexican, Iranian, or British citizen into becoming an American. It’s not magic. It doesn’t possess the power to end allegiances to other countries.
When Trump started the war in Iran, Iranians living in the U.S. flooded the streets. The pictures of the demonstrations went viral, showing a sea of activists draped in Iranian flags. It was American blood being spilled for their cause, and yet they weren’t celebrating drenched in the stars and stripes, but the green, white, and red. When ICE went into Minnesota to crack down on Somali immigrant fraud, again, Americans didn’t see our flag but the Somali flag being flown in support of the accused. And in Los Angeles, when ICE began immigration raids, it was the Mexican flag.
Yet the children of every one of these protesters waving foreign flags would automatically be considered U.S. citizens despite their parents’ clear allegiance to a foreign country. And it’s clear their parents would not be raising these new citizens to honor and uphold American values or laws. Their true identity has nothing to do with where they were born, but rather with the principles instilled in them by their parents.
This is what Wang and her cohort are asking SCOTUS to rule in favor of.
Whether they know it or not, they are arguing for the complete destruction of our country. And as an American, I am being asked to sit back and take it.
Being an American isn’t the soil I walk on, even though I see it as my birthright. It’s the values that bind us together, the heritage. It is the character forged by common principles, not mere residency. Our country can only survive if each generation internalizes the habits passed down to us by our ancestors. That internalization happens at the family table, in bedtime stories, and in the moral formation parents provide. It can never be transcribed by simply being born here.
We are a welcoming country. Some of our greatest citizens were immigrants from other countries who actively chose to embrace American ideals. Their success was earned by cultural transmission. When immigrants fail or refuse to pass on that heritage, their children may grow up physically present in the U.S., but they are undoubtedly spiritually foreign. And that’s how we end up seeing American citizens (on paper) taking to the streets professing foreign grievances.
Birth is incidental. We are blessed to be born into the long line of Americans. Those who come here seeking a piece of this crown should face a hurdle that requires more than mere physical presence, but rather an actual allegiance to the legacy they seek to be part of. If we don’t have this basic requirement, there is no point in asking the meaning of American citizenship because, without allegiance, there is no value.
Sometime this summer, SCOTUS will hand down a ruling that will fundamentally change the meaning of American citizenship. I don’t have high hopes that it will protect the U.S. from harm. But I know that I will never stop fighting for my country and the legacy that I am responsible for protecting.
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