In the march towards national “purity”, at least one Republican is introducing a bill that would force millions of Americans to give up their long-held rights and freedoms in other countries or face alienation and total upheaval in America.

First, the author of bill S.3283, Republican Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno, and the fascist-edging ideals he rode in on, can fuck all the way off.

Second, the bill seems largely devoid of any rationale or substance, making it feel like a piece of cloutrage garbage meant to curry favor with Trump and the Magaverse — which it is.

I am an immigrant, a naturalized US citizen. I was born in Canada and my mother is American, which means I have dual citizenship and would personally stand to lose rights and freedoms in at least one of those countries if this bill were enacted into law.

My membership in the global community would be diminished purely out of unfounded fear and distrust of me from fellow Americans.

But that’s not what really bothers me.

Hey kid, isn’t your old man Canadian?

My kids are technically dual-citizens because they inherited Canadian citizenship from me, even if they never claim it by registering with the Canadian government ¹. I’m sure there are thousands, maybe millions of Americans in the same boat. Many may not even be aware of their status if they’ve lived in the US all their lives and never discussed matters of citizenship with their parents.

If my kids were never made aware of their status as dual-citizens and this bill were enacted into law as written, failure to comply with the law by denouncing their foreign citizenship in a timely fashion would result in them automatically losing their American citizenship without even realizing it.

They would immediately cease to be Americans despite being born to American parents right here in Caribou and living their entire lives in the United States. Given the current stance of the Trump Administration on how immigrants, illegal or otherwise, should be treated, it’s not so far fetched to imagine my kids being abducted by masked ICE or CBP agents and sent to a detention center to await deportation to Canada (or any country, apparently) while they serve as a backdrop for photo ops for Kristi Noem who will dubiously claim to have proof of their MS-13 gang affiliation.

Could It Really Be That Bad?

Even if you’re not a conservative Republican, you might be rolling your eyes and thinking, C’mon now, you know it wouldn’t actually work like that. The bill would obviously be fleshed out with more nuance, details, and safeguards before it was signed into law to prevent real Americans from losing their citizenship and being deported. The rhetoric may sound extreme, but in the end, cooler heads will prevail and we’ll all be protected by the checks and balances built into our government. Calm down.

You might also, before you can even finish that thought, remind yourself of who’s in charge at the White House right now, how openly he derides immigrants and their families, and how ready he is to foment outrage and distrust to shift blame away from himself for anything and everything.

Haitians are eating the dogs. Mexicans are rapists and murderers, bad hombres. Somalis are garbage who don’t contribute anything to this country, and I don’t want them here. Democrats should be put to death for seditious behavior!

These messages are never really directed at individuals — he hones in on stories of the missteps and bad behavior of a few individuals, whether true or not, and ascribes them to entire populations and communities of people (there’s a word for that…it’s racism). He communicates this through social media platforms designed to deliver bite-sized blocks of rhetoric with no context and little opportunity to think about what’s being said before you’re hit with the next ALL-CAPS bulletin in a non-stop barrage of hateful and schizophrenic stream-of-consciousness commentary that many now regard as federal policy.

He doesn’t like us, and he’s not shy about it — and I’m talking about all Americans, not just immigrants and marginalized groups (we’re all just one “Truth” away from being kicked out of the country or executed for sedition).

He’s willing to put people’s lives at risk to get his point across. He lies and intimidates his way through everything for lack of ability and skill and gushes over people who are willing to praise him and work ruthlessly towards his interests.

Hey, I heard you’re having relations with other countries. What kind of slutty little traitor are you? I suddenly feel distrust and disdain for you and I don’t think you should hold public office or be allowed to vote. In fact, get the hell out of my country, you foreign piece of garbage! We don’t want anyone here who isn’t more than one generation removed from an immigrant or at least pledged total loyalty in perpetuity throughout space and time to the greatest nation on Earth, which is of course how you can spot a pure and loyal patriot who will always act in the interest of ALL AMERICANS…LIKE THE GREATEST MAN WHO EVER LIVED, OUR SAVIOR DONALD J. TRUMP! THE “J” IS FOR “JESUS I’M HARD FOR AMERICA”!!!

Just Another Brick in the Wall

In my mind, this bill is the most recent example of a wave of MAGA purism, reminiscent of Nazi Germany (sorry Germany, I know you’re over it, but I have to bring it up). Just like “defending natural families”, redefining American citizenship in the name of “making America great again” serves no other purpose than to bring us back to the days when all power lay exclusively in the hands of wealthy, white men.

Here is a link to his proposed bill from the Senate website. Also, here is a link to the bill’s page on Congress’ website. As of today there is very little information about the bill — no summary, no co-sponsors, no logic explaining exactly why individuals with dual or multiple citizenship would ultimately bring harm to the nation beyond a vague suggestion of potential “conflicts of interest” and “divided loyalties”, which in my mind does not provide sufficient reasoning for revoking anyone’s citizenship (not even Melania’s).

The current rumblings online suggest that the bill falls so far short of the Constitution that it doesn’t stand a chance of passing as it is written. However, this bill, whether it passes or not, has me particularly worried.

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1. The current text of the bill seems a little vague on what constitutes “foreign citizenship”, defining it as “any status recognized by the government of a foreign country that confers on an individual the nationality or citizenship of such country or requires the allegiance of an individual to such country”. This definition seems open to some degree of interpretation. Does a “recognized status” include that which is inherited via the “first-generation rule” recognized by the Canadian government (see https://allhod.com/parent-born-in-canada/), or is it limited to actual registered citizens of the foreign nation? ↩︎