Great, let’s expand the most Gestapo-esque “police force” we’ve had in the history of the US.
Wow the Snopes linked video is sort of breath taking, as is the sheer stupidity of asking somebody who looks obviously native-American if he is in the country legally.
I’d prefer to level the hypocrisy and racism charges.
If a person is brown or black, these people think it’s okay to make snap judgements about their nationality based on the ethnicity.
While if a person looks Native American, they ignore all that and just question if they’re ‘really American’.
So, it sounds like someone got the idea that they were there to ‘work’ instead of do ‘business’, which triggered the extreme response from the border agent.
HARR, Tex. — On paper, he’s a devoted U.S. citizen.
His official American birth certificate shows he was delivered by a midwife in Brownsville, at the southern tip of Texas. He spent his life wearing American uniforms: three years as a private in the Army, then as a cadet in the Border Patrol and now as a state prison guard.
But when Juan, 40, applied to renew his U.S. passport this year, the government’s response floored him. In a letter, the State Department said it didn’t believe he was an American citizen.
As he would later learn, Juan is one of a growing number of people whose official birth records show they were born in the United States but who are now being denied passports — their citizenship suddenly thrown into question. The Trump administration is accusing hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Hispanics along the border of using fraudulent birth certificates since they were babies, and it is undertaking a widespread crackdown on their citizenship.
Fuck Trump, Sessions, Miller, and all their collaborators. Some people need to get shorn after this is all over.
Fucking christ. Oh no, maybe some brown people lived worked and paid taxes as US citizens for a few decades, better leverage the power of the state to correct that terrible injustice.
What is fact and what is fiction?
This latest outrage might even affect me personally: my first name is José and I was born in Guatemala in 1961. Sure, I had a US passport before I was two or three months old (my late dad was from Oregon and was working in Central America at the time) but my latest one just expired last month. If people with US birth certificates are getting denied, what do you think my chances are?
The article claims it’s because some midwives confessed to providing false papers. The problem is with the history of this administration it is not easy to believe they are not merely using it as a legal fig leaf to cut migration, legal and illegal, to absolute minimum.
An interesting side effect is that raising the cost of entry/reentry, while not completely stopping migration from Mexico and Central America, leads to an even more pliant, docile workforce…
I carry my passport card around now. Well, I always did but now I double check to make sure I have it. And I worry because I was born in a Central American country.
Meanwhile my Ukranian friend still hasn’t bothered to apply for citizenship… I told him they are deporting all sorts of people, reversing citizenships, etc. He doesn’t care and doesn’t think it applies to him. Blue eyes, Trump supporting family.
Got my new passport just days before the election and I haven’t been out of the house without it since.
Well, if they’re reversing citizenships, then I guess it doesn’t really matter if he applies for citizenship or not! ;)
He’s toast. That attitude is how you end up on their list.
This really upsets me.
Following the typical Republican ME-ME-ME philosophy, this won’t impact ANY of them, unless they are in the exact demographic that’s being targeted. And probably some of those Republicans will still keep voting for the party anyways.
I have similar concerns, Papageno. I was born in an African country (US military base) and don’t have a standard U.S. birth certificate. But because I’m white, I’m merely nervous about updating my passport and possibly traveling outside the country, and not terrified at the prospect as I would be if I were a POC.
Oh god, yes. I can not express my deep regret that you experience this @None
Or how much I loathe the people who made that the nessecary reality for you. It’s like something straight out of apartheid South Africa.
I’m fair-skinned as well --my Salvadoran mom is descended from the lesser nobility that arrived with the Conquistadores, and while the sheer probabilities would suggest that I have some Central American indigenous DNA, and North African before that, it’s not “apparent” if you will. That plus my late dad being of Dutch/Flemish, English, Irish and Scottish descent, plus my being a native English speaker, means that no one guesses I’m bicultural till they learn my first name, or hear me speak Spanish, of course-- we grew up speaking Spanish at home as my parents’ conscious choice, though it was a non-native language for my dad.*
So I’m basically in the same boat as you @barstein. Don’t know whether I’m better off just waiting till the federal government isn’t being run by nativist psychos to renew my passport.
*He was insanely talented (and a perfectionist) with languages. Grew up a farm kid near La Grande, Oregon and somehow became interested in learning Spanish as a young teen. Had the good luck to turn 18 in 1946, did his stint in the service (in the occupation of Japan), got out, studied in Mexico through the GI Bill and got both a BA and MA in quick succession, worked in Mexico and Latin America through the 1950s and into the early 60’s, finally settling on teaching Spanish at the college level. Essentially taught himself enough French, German, Italian and Portuguese to read novels in all of those languages as well BTW.