The step beyond stateless

I recently posted that the nasty guy and his minions have started refusing to renew passports and even taken some away. Jennifer Wright, in an article for Harper’s Bazaar, takes it one more step. Revoking citizenship is a precursor to genocide.

Yeah, we’ll go there – in 1938 Germany declared passports held by Jews were invalid.

But genocide? Here? In America? Yes. Already happened. We slaughtered Native Americans. We kept autocratic policies, such as slavery and Jim Crow, in places for decades. And just this year we started stripping children from immigrant parents. All these cases, now and in the past, are about race.

After the Holocaust the Universal Declaration of Human Rights said, “Everyone has a right to a nationality.” The American Supreme Court ruled in 1967 that a U.S. citizen cannot lose his or her citizenship unless he or she willingly surrenders it. The nasty guy is disobeying the law.

So the solution is deportation? Germany tried that too. They proposed several deportation solutions, such as sending all Jews to Madagascar. Then they concluded one way to get rid of Jews is to kill them.

If that starts happening in American with Latinos as the target we probably won’t hear much. Despots usually don’t announce how they are persecuting minorities. But leading up to that we’ll hear a lot about “othering” – declaring them to be those people, who aren’t really human. Not like us. Asylum seekers have already been called people who want to “infest” our country.

Yeah, making a lot of noise about this is not fun. Especially since we have to keep doing it. Protesting isn’t fun. Calling Congresscritters isn’t fun. Anything else is more fun.

Now consider if your grandparents lived in Germany during the rise of the Nazis and did nothing. They might offer all kinds of reasons. But once you found out how would you think of them when you saw them at Christmas? Perhaps a tiny bit disgusted?

Now what about your grandchildren? How will they think about you?

I can’t tell you what actions you should take, because I don’t know what talents you have at your disposal. Do you have legal skills to help people who may be threatened by these new changes? Use them. Can you write about what’s going on? Write about it. Do you have a church or place or worship to help organize refuge for the persecuted? Do so. Do you have time to call your senators and congressmen? Call. Keep calling. Make them hear you.

Do something today to make your descendants proud.

Yeah, it is easy for me to say that because I don’t have descendants. Even so, the people watching me aren’t always related by genetics. And I’m writing about it.