Like father, like son. In 1927, as America struggled with its latest massive surge of non-Protestant and non-English or non-German white immigration, police arrested Donald Trump’s father, Fred, in a fascist brawl not far from where Trump grew up in Queens, New York, for asserting that “Native-born Protestant Americans” were being “assaulted by Roman Catholic police of New York City,” and that “one flag, the American flag … one language, the English language” were threatened by immigrants. He was wearing Ku Klux Klan (KKK) robes and was a member of this white supremacist Protestant organization.

Now, 98 years later, Trump fulfilled a campaign pledge on his first day back in office as president, issuing an executive order ending “birthright citizenship,” which for over 150 years has automatically granted American citizenship to anyone born on the territory of the United States. America’s sometimes violent 250-year struggle to define who and what is an “American” continues a revolutionary argument between beliefs and blood and soil.

A battle between beliefs and blood

Birthright citizenship — jus soli — has been guaranteed by the XIVth Amendment to the US Constitution for 160 years. It underpins one of the tenets of American society: Americans are defined, and America is woven together by a set of ideals — democracy, the rule of law, individual rights, tolerance of all creeds and races — by who you are.  

But repeatedly in American history — in the 1840s, 1870s, 1920s, 1960s and today — anti-immigrant militancy has surged when America’s founding white Protestant culture and population have felt threatened by large numbers of non-white, non-Protestant immigrants.  Demands soar to restrict citizenship by jus sanguinis, birthright by blood, by what your heritage is. This is what Donald Trump is trying to do, part of his actions to stop all illegal immigration.

The view from the border

One look at the US-Mexico border explains the origins of Trump’s executive order nullifying birthright citizenship, and of his and his supporters’ anger about illegal immigration. Many Americans feel the United States has lost control of its own border.  

Just in 2022, 2.6 million illegal immigrants entered the US from Mexico. Over 14% of the US population is immigrants, the highest proportion since Trump’s father brawled about America’s cultural pollution. Over 11 million residents are “illegal aliens,” or “undocumented migrants.” Most are Spanish-speaking Hispanics, almost half of whom struggle with English.  

The myth of the criminal immigrant

Many citizens denounce “illegals” for taking jobs, lowering wages, increasing crime and not paying taxes but benefiting from government social programs, all while infecting America’s English cultural roots, language and gene pool. “They are violent criminals,” “the dregs of society,” Trump has repeated.  

Most Americans do want to see illegal immigration controlled, but literally none of Trump’s assertions and beliefs are true: The total number of illegal aliens — 11 million — has remained stable for a decade. Illegal aliens pay taxes, receive far less welfare payments than native Americans, learn English, have equal or superior education levels to Americans and commit fewer crimes than Americans. And Americans oppose ending birthright citizenship 52% to 24%.

Economic consequences and political intent

Eliminating birthright citizenship would harm several of the key factors in America’s historic economic dynamism. Immigration, half of which is illegal, provides America with a growing population and a mobile and low-cost labor force. Stopping illegal immigration will cause labor costs to rise, increase inflation and lower US GDP growth. 

US population growth will stop, the US will rapidly become an older society, with a more rapidly worsening worker-to-pensioner ratio, and higher government deficits. And, in towering and socially dangerous ironies, ending birthright citizenship for babies born to two illegal immigrants would increase the unauthorized population by 4.7 million people in the coming decades. Denying citizenship to babies with one illegal parent would double the illegal US population over the next two decades and create a permanent subclass of up to 24 million stateless people living in a shadow society outside US law. 

For Trump and his supporters, the issue, ultimately, is cultural and racial, just as citizenship questions have always been in America. Economic facts are secondary, or simply not believed.  The progressively Trump-tinged courts will find ways partially to accept Trump’s argument, despite the clarity of the American Constitution. 

“What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening,” Trump has said.  What is happening is that Trump and his supporters, like his father Fred and so many before him, feel threatened by immigrants who do not look like Fred or Donald Trump.  

[Newsweek Japan first published a version of this piece.]

[Kaitlyn Diana edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.