At 250, America is still deciding who | Human Rights

Last week, just days before the country’s 250th anniversary, the United States Supreme Court reaffirmed the right to citizenship for almost everyone born in the US. Anticipation for the decision had been building, and you could hear the sigh of relief when the announcement came. The President cannot override the constitution and the executive order. The US will remain, at least in this sense, an open and welcoming society.

Immigration activists across the country celebrated. The decision was a criticism of the president’s anti-immigration policy. It sounded like a bullet had just been fired from a loaded gun.

To the administration and its supporters, the Court’s 6-3 decision was seen as a betrayal. Mr. Trump responded in a blatantly racist manner, writing on Social Truth that he “wants to congratulate President Xi, and the Great Nation of China, for their victory on Birthright Citizenship!” White House adviser Stephen Miller, who is the head of Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda (and his unpopular secretary of histrionics), described the court’s decision as “self-destruction”.

Well done, Stephen. Good run! Indeed, political prophets who predict the end of the Republic because of some flaw in the immigration system are always like the North Star. We would do well to remember this fact as the country commemorates their 250th birthday. We have survived everything from the anti-Catholic Know-Nothings (so-called because the group began as a secret society, and members were instructed to say they “knew nothing” about their group to outsiders) to the terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan (still with us, but a shadow of what it once was).

Reading the Supreme Court’s decision on citizenship is helpful, unless the justices review the ways in which various disparate groups have been challenged over the years. These are Chinese Americans like Wong Kim Ark. Wong was born in San Francisco to Chinese parents in the 1870s, but the authorities denied him citizenship, saying he owed money to the Chinese Emperor and not the US. He sued and won, and his 1898 Supreme Court case solidified the legal foundation of the Fourteenth Amendment, which established civil rights.

Also cited in this decision is the 1857 Supreme Court ruling that blacks, slave or free, could not be US citizens. In this case, Dred Scott v Sandford, which was very famous in the US, was violating its principle of granting citizenship by jus soli (born in the land). The Fourteenth Amendment, passed after the Civil War, righted that wrong, many wrote. And it must always be remembered that the Indian Citizenship Act, which extended citizenship to the Indians of this country, was enacted into law in 1924. Each of these groups, of course, must also fight efforts to suppress voters continuously in order to use all their citizens.

Based on this important Supreme Court decision, it may look like a liberal and liberal America is being vindicated from the bench. This, sadly, is a hasty and unnecessary thought. What the court decided on the subject of immigration makes it clear that, although the right to be born is guaranteed, the Court allows the government to deny promises of freedom and guarantees of freedom to others who come to our shores and live in our lands.

The court struck down Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a program that began in 1990 to provide temporary residency and work permits to immigrants fleeing war and other instability. The proposal will directly affect the hundreds of thousands of Haitians and thousands of Syrians who live and work in the US. And not only them. Some lawmakers are already warning that the sudden departure of Haitians, who make up a large portion of the health care workforce, will have a negative impact on the country’s health care system. Other nationals on TPS, including Lebanese, Salvadorans, Sudanese, and Ukrainians, are at risk of losing their right to live and work.

It doesn’t end there. The court also ruled that the government can deport asylum seekers at ports of entry at the southern border, a policy that was enacted during the first Trump administration. This law now has the force of law behind it, and the consequences will be devastating. In a strong dissent, Justice Sotomayor explained that “the Court today blesses the decision of the Executive Branch to close the door to all those fleeing persecution, despite the detailed review and the escape process that Congress has established and mandated.”

Right now, we have an administration that wants to screw over American citizens on a scale not seen since the Civil Rights Era. And the First Amendment Right to Freedom of Expression is being Denied, Unprotected, by our president, while the government wants to deport human rights activists, such as Palestinian leader Mahmoud Khalil, for their speech.

Islamophobia has been mobilized into the most contemptible political group with the rise of the so-called “Sharia-free Caucus”, a congressional meeting of 60 Republican representatives from 25 countries who have agreed to fight the threat of what they call “Sharia law”. (In Islam, Sharia is a moral guide rather than law.) The No-Sharia Caucus has decided that “Sharia Law” is taking over “our Laws, our freedoms, and the Christian foundation of our country”. Nonsense, true, but let’s be clear. The anti-Catholic Know-Nothing of the past has been revived and transformed into the anti-Muslim Sharia-free Caucus of today.

On the 250th anniversary of the founding of the US, we would do well to understand that the country is not a body of stated principles or fixed ideas. In fact, the US is an institution in constant flux, its meaning and values ​​are challenged every day. For most of our history, the race has often been about a few who hold the right to define and reward what it means to be an American. The same war will continue, perhaps for another 250 years. But what should be clearly understood, especially today, is that the promise of this country is close to being fulfilled when it talks about its principles of freedom and justice for all, and it always gives those rights to the many people and not the few.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.