For the Nation’s Birthday, Making It Harder to Become an American
Key takeaways
- The celebrations start this month, but the party planners seem to have faltered.
- Stephen Miller, Trump’s top domestic-policy adviser, has presided over the most concerted effort in a century to recast citizenship as a tool of systematic exclusion.
- Unlike so many iconic American fights, held in the halls of Congress or on the streets of major cities, this campaign is being waged for the most part in obscurity.
Photo illustration by Cristiana Couceiro; Source photographs from Getty Save this story Save this story Save this story Save this story Shortly after taking office for the second time, Donald Trump created the White House Task Force on Celebrating America’s 250th Birthday, naming himself—“the man who some say is the Greatest President in History”—as its chair. The celebrations start this month, but the party planners seem to have faltered. Musical performers largely pulled out of a concert, so Trump is staging a rally, and a U.F.C. cage match will grace the South Lawn. It is a heady moment to be asking existential questions about what it means to be American. But, as it happens, another member of the task force has spent the past year and a half preparing a diligent and thorough answer on behalf of the President.
Stephen Miller, Trump’s top domestic-policy adviser, has presided over the most concerted effort in a century to recast citizenship as a tool of systematic exclusion. Under his direction, the Administration has chosen to honor the Semiquincentennial by keeping people from entering the United States, by restricting those who have already done so from becoming full citizens, and by trying to strip naturalized citizens of their legal status. It is a vision that sends the country back in time, to some of the lowest points of the past century.
Unlike so many iconic American fights, held in the halls of Congress or on the streets of major cities, this campaign is being waged for the most part in obscurity. Immigration policy gets to the core of the country’s identity, yet lawmakers haven’t passed legislation for comprehensive reform in more than thirty-five years. Drastic changes have instead come via executive orders, bureaucratic regulations, and technocratic maneuvers. It’s an ad-hoc form of policymaking that suits the President’s maximalist impulses and gives an ideologue like Miller a broad range of opportunities.