Until three years ago, my wife and I were like a lot of immigrants: Drawn to the U.S. by jobs better than what we could find at home, we saw ourselves as outsiders — temporary resident aliens, as the government called us. Even living in Washington, I followed U.S. politics with detachment.
And then our daughter was born. I went to the D.C. vital records office to pick up her birth certificate. What I remember, tucked among the many indelible moments of her first few weeks, is looking at that piece of paper and feeling excited at her being an American. She belonged here, just as much as anyone did. And if she belonged, then maybe we did too.
As the country argues the merits of ending birthright citizenship — Would that stem illegal immigration? Would it require a constitutional amendment? How would it affect the Republican Party’s electoral prospects? — something intangible is getting overlooked: For a nation built on assimilation, it’s hard to think of anything that better instills a sense of common purpose, of identifying with and caring about the place you live, than having your child be a citizen of that place.
Of course, the immigrants most people have in mind when they argue against birthright citizenship probably aren’t Canadians who sit at keyboards. But providing an incentive to integrate, a reason to adopt the values and customs of your new country as if they were your own, ought to be just as important for people whose foreignness helps drive public sentiment against them. If Republicans are worried that undocumented Mexican immigrants are changing the fabric of the U.S., then weakening the means by which they assimilate makes little sense.
The counterargument is that severing future immigrants’ emotional connection to the U.S., preventing their children from automatically becoming citizens, helps stem their flow into the country and eases the removal of those who make it in.
That’s a dangerous argument, because however this debate ends, the U.S. will still need immigrants. What stands to change is whether the mechanisms that help transform immigrants into Americans get dismantled. The risk of repealing birthright citizenship is that immigrants’ new sense of identity will be eroded, along with all the good that identity entails for their new home.
Soon after our daughter was born, my wife and I got our green cards. Last summer, our son was born, making our family one-half American.
When I write about U.S. politics now, it feels more personal, less clinical. In two years, after having lived in the country for a decade, my wife and I will be eligible to apply for citizenship, the ability to vote. I’m starting to care who sits on the city council.
E-mail Bloomberg View columnist Christopher Flavelle at cflavelle@ . A longer version of this column is at .
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