Last week, days before the nation’s 250-year anniversary, the United States Supreme Court reaffirmed the constitutional right to citizenship to nearly everyone born in the US. Anticipation of this decision had long been building, and you could almost hear a collective sigh of relief when the announcement arrived. The president cannot cancel the Constitution by executive order. The US will remain, at least in this one very specific way, an open and welcoming society.Immigration advocates across the country celebrated. The ruling was a rebuke to the president’s supercharged anti-immigration agenda. It felt like a bullet had just been taken out of a loaded gun.To the administration and its supporters, the Court’s 6-3 judgement was seen as a betrayal. Trump responded with barely concealed racist snark, writing on Truth Social that he “would like to congratulate President Xi, and the Great Country of China, on their massive Birthright Citizenship WIN!” White House adviser Stephen Miller, the chief architect of Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda (and his unofficial secretary of histrionics), described the court’s decision as “our national self-obliteration”.Well, Stephen. It’s been a good run! In truth, political prophets predicting the demise of the republic due to some misbegotten aspect of the immigration system are as constant as the North Star. We’d …
