Rising This Week: Naturalized on the Fourth of July

New Hampshire activists are supporting immigrants this Independence Day at a naturalization ceremony, as Trump attacks our newest U.S. citizens.

Five hundred and three people from 80 different countries take the oath to become U.S. citizens on July 4, 2019. (Genna Martin, Seattlepi.com via Getty Images)

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During Donald Trump’s first term in 2019, I attended the naturalization ceremony of a friend born in an Eastern European country still feeling the effects of the Soviet era. Like many immigrants, she is one of the hardest working people I know and a voracious news consumer.

She, along with a ceremonial courtroom full of soon-to-be U.S. citizens, raised her right hand and took the oath to, among other things, “support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

As a gift, I gave her reading materials to begin her journey into citizenship: a hand-printed and Kinkos-bound copy of the then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s just-released report into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. She now counts herself among the roughly 3 percent of U.S. citizens to have read the 448-page report in full.

I tell this anecdote to make a simple point: Immigrants are among the most scrupulous, informed, and enterprising citizens we’ve got.

Last week, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that could allow Trump to try to negate the right of birthright citizenship in 30 days. The conservative supermajority never found Trump’s executive order attacking birthright citizenship to be legal, and every judge who has considered it found it wildly unconstitutional, given the plain meaning of the 14th Amendment. There are already multiple class action lawsuits to prevent that from happening, and one is heading to federal court as early as Monday.

If ultimately not blocked, Trump’s order could strip an estimated 150,000 newborns of citizenship, leaving an untold number stateless, hungry and without access to healthcare or food stamps.

Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda gets even more radical and authoritarian from there. Earlier this month, Trump’s senior Justice Department attorney Brett Schumate issued a memorandum “Prioritizing Denaturalization” in 10 poorly defined categories of cases. One category focuses on purported threats to national security, and the Trump administration’s pursuit of student activists shows the government has an elastic definition of what that means. Another simply allows the Justice Department to try to strip people of citizenship in cases deemed “sufficiently important to pursue.”

Even after his Supreme Court victory, Trump might never have a chance to put his birthright citizenship ban into practice, but his government’s extreme actions have driven New Hampshire-based activists to spend their July 4th at a naturalization ceremony, rather than a barbecue.

In New York City, such ceremonies occur most Friday mornings in the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Courthouse. Walking in the courthouse lobby on those days, you can witness families from around the world with hope on their faces, experiencing pure joy in the most bureaucratic of locations. Many of them have escaped tyranny, corruption, bigotry, lawlessness, criminality and persecution in their birth countries — hoping to find a different experience in the United States.

This July 4th, there seems to be no more poignant affirmation about our national ideals than welcoming immigrants during the naturalization ceremony. If you are in coastal New Hampshire, find more details about how to attend here.

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