Birthrights

On the last day of his presidency, in his last speech, President Ronald Reagan recalled what someone had once written to him: “You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.”

He continued: “We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people—our strength—from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nation. While other countries cling to the stale past, here in America, we breathe life into dreams. We create the future, and the world follows us into tomorrow. Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we’re a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier. This quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.”

Ronald Reagan, our 40th President and a conservative Republican, was a beneficiary of birthright citizenship. His great-grandparents immigrated from Ireland and Scotland; their progeny were American citizens from birth. It is literally part of our national character- “the Great American Melting Pot”, to reference the famous Boomer TV show.

Reagan was correct- our nation is not a genotype, geography or even a set of laws and government. Our country is nearly unique in the world because America is an ideology. The original ideologically-founded nation, actually (although others have copied our success, to various extents). With glaring and painful exceptions, Americans are of every race, genotype, creed, culture, belief system, motivation and background, and we can be anything, at least according to the laws of our land and the hypothetical idea of Americana.

Isao Oshiba

Isao’s father Jutaro emigrated from Asagun District, Hiroshima Prefecture, in the Japanese Empire aboard the S.S. Korea, arriving and registering with immigration authorities on November 21, 1907. He left behind his family, his friends and his culture to find work and a better life for himself in Hawaii, finding himself in Hilo. He became a blacksmith and married Mitsuyo, an American-born woman whose parents (Isakichi and Ume Tsumura) had emigrated to Maui in the 1890s. These people were not rich, famous, powerful or particularly unique- they were average Americans, facing the problems, attitudes and opportunities of the time. Mitsuyo was classified as a nesei, a first-generation American born to immigrant parents; Jutaro was classified as issei and was considered ineligible for citizenship due to his Japanese ancestry and a presumption of generic fealty to the Emperor of Japan. I’m quite certain that certain (white) Americans in a position to write and enforce the laws of the time did not want their children to be considered Americans, but even by the laws of the time, they were bound by the landmark 1898 United States vs Wong Kim Ark decision, which affirmed that the 14th Amendment extended citizenship to everyone subject to the jurisdiction of the United States as interpreted by the common law. Functionally, this meant that everyone born in the United States (with the very, very narrow exception of children born to foreign diplomats on an official posting to the United States and thus under diplomatic immunity) was to be considered an American citizen. Originally, this decision also carved out Native American tribes (who were considered to be citizens of their own nation first), but this discrimination would ultimately be remedied by the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. United States vs Wong Kim Ark also definitively reversed the infamous Dred Scott decision, which had been interpreted to mean that Black persons were not legally people, certainly not citizens. Think on that…even in 1898, the relatively-conservative Fuller court had the courage to rule that racism had limits. Perhaps it was a recognition that the systemic, unlimited application of racism had led directly to a fracturing of the nation that was only patched with conquest and bloodshed. Perhaps it was guilt over the extinction of the Native Americans. Perhaps it was simply a tough, honest recognition that the law as written could not be interpreted to isolate particular persons in perpetuity without forever staining the nation as simply another racially-defined entity. Perhaps it was a recognition that luring Jutaro and the Tsumuras and the Alvarezes and the Graneses and Martins and Trumps and Reagans and Eisenhowers of the world to man American factories, fields and foundries would require the carrot of citizenship- at least for their children- to entice them to leave behind their old lives. For the young Oshiba factory, this meant that Isao and his sisters were born as citizens; they could enjoy opportunities that Jutaro never could. Whether this ever crossed his mind, none could say. He registered for the draft in 1917; they had four children; they worked and lived and eventually died. Jutaro wasn’t technically a citizen, but let’s look at what his family did. Let’s look at Isao.

Isao came of age at the beginning of World War II. Child labor, something called “barefoot tackle football”, school, etc. He registered for the draft on February 16, 1942 in Hilo, Hawaii- 78 days after Pearl Harbor. Contrary to popular belief, the great growth of the United States military wasn’t instantaneous- it took nearly 15 months for the Army, bureaucracy and infrastructure to grow enough to accommodate Isao’s draft; mixing in the additional imposed barriers of Japanese ancestry to the War Department; it took until March 18, 1943 for him to be inducted into the service. He was 23 years old and left his mother and sisters behind to serve his country. His parents put out a notice in the Hilo Tribune-Herald thanking the community for their kindness to Isao and expressing their confidence that he would “fulfill his duties as an American soldier with honor.” Let’s parse that- even as their fellow Japanese-Americans on the mainland were being incarcerated in concentration camps and their lives in Hawaii were being upended by curfews and suspicion, he and tens of thousands of others were volunteering to fight against their own relatives and their culture. It wasn’t just Japanese men either- Black Americans volunteered from conditions identical to slavery to fight for the same nation that enforced segregation on them and lynched them; Native Americans volunteered to fight for the same nation that had quite literally destroyed their people and cultures; Italian and German immigrants and their children took up arms against their ancestral cultures because they were American.

Isao served with the 442nd RCT through the toughest 18 months of the European War. He returned home, married, raised a family, and died in 2006. On some level, he was just another American veteran. His sisters raised their own families, who propagated themselves. Some of us look vaguely Asian, others are painfully white. There’s doctors, software engineers, officers, paramedics, teachers, storekeepers, flight crew and a host of other professions among us. Some are veterans, some are parents. We’re taxpayers and voters and buyers. Some of us are Republicans and some are Democrats. All in all, America’s gotten quite a good

Return on its initial investment of simply allowing Isao and his siblings to call themselves “Americans”. Millions of tax dollars, lives of service, and our accomplishments are part of the American story because our ancestors were considered to be citizens. We’re not alone– we are just another expression of the peculiar formula that makes America great. That’s why the innovations of the past 250 years have been concentrated in the United States. That’s why we enjoy our position as a superpower, with the ability to dictate world events, and the resources and tenacity to shape the world to our advantage as a culture and a society. That’s why we are special. It isn’t the only factor, but it’s the only one that other nations cannot readily duplicate.

I’ll leave you with these thoughts. Frederick Trump emigrated from Bavaria, at the age of 16. He was not wealthy, powerful or special. Indeed, he was considered a criminal in his native country because he had refused to participate in Bavaria’s mandatory military service (something tells me Isao and his comrades would have opinions on this, but I do agree with Frederick that mandatory military service is antithetical to human freedom). He prospered, started a family, and died during a pandemic. He was only able to become a citizen because of the relatively low barriers to entry of the time; his children were nothing particularly different than Isao or Mitsuko. Only their own lives and circumstances and differences set them apart. But because of birthright citizenship, Fred Trump never needed to worry about being subjected to the threat of conscription into Adolf Hitler’s Wehrmacht…and his son was able to become the President…twice.

Today, Donald John Trump and his presidential administration are actively arguing to restrict birthright citizenship to the children of only citizens and lawful permanent residents of the United States.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/protecting-the-meaning-and-value-of-american-citizenship

It’s transparently aimed at Hispanic, Asian and African immigrants, with a heavy emphasis on Hispanics. It was immediately blocked by three separate federal courts; including one led by a Reagan-appointed highly-conservative judge

“I have been on the bench for over four decades. I can’t remember another case where the case presented is as clear as it is here,” said Judge John Coughenour of the Western District of Washington during a January hearing in the case. “This is a blatantly unconstitutional order.”

Currently, the Court is debating whether to not to allow individual judges to place injunctions restraining executive actions; that is its own issue with many nuances.

So, the system is chewing on Trump’s desire to pull the ladder up behind him. Maybe there are merits to his desires and restricting the Oshibas of the 21st Century will somehow make America a better, stronger, more prosperous nation. But I’m not seeing how that works, considering that our country has literally never been weakened by expanding our base and has become the template for success precisely because of our diversity, inclusion and integration. Maybe, just maybe, Donald J. Trump’s expression of racism and prejudice against people is a symptom of his own feelings, and maybe we shouldn’t be allowing one man’s biases and prejudices to kneecap our nation. Maybe, just maybe, we should embrace immigration policies that offer us the prospect of having Worf, Son of Mogh as a citizen of the United States, not the one that turns us into a real-life analogue of the Romulan Star Empire where birth lines, ancestry and family wealth are the determinative factors in the course of our lives. Human history is replete with examples of how that mistake unfolds- and our own nation is the shining counter example of why it’s dumb.