Illegal Immigration as an Assault on the Body Politic
Last week, on June 12, President Trump surprisingly announced a rollback to his immigration policy of detaining and deporting illegal immigrants working in agriculture, the hotel business, restaurants, and other blue collar and leisure industries. This announcement garnered significant backlash on X among Trump’s MAGA supporters. While ‘panicans’ immediately bailed and began bewailing the ‘breakup’ of the MAGA coalition, others reasoned that Trump was involved in political messaging necessary to balance factions and competing interests in his administration. Indeed, on the same day, Trump signaled his base that he understood their frustration, and that he was committed to removing every last illegal immigrant. In less than a week, Trump reversed his policy, once again making illegals working in these industries vulnerable to removal.
The conflicting immigration messages from the Trump administration created confusion among his supporters. Some began talking about the necessity of amnesty and the fanciful notion of deporting twenty or more million illegal aliens. Is amnesty really an option, even if only for the most ‘innocent’ of illegal immigrants? Must Americans accept an illegal migrant workforce to do the manual labor and field jobs that American citizens won’t do? Must we not compromise as a concession to reality?
The answer to all these questions is ‘No!’ Here is why.
From Subject to Citizen
Americans have a robust concept of republican citizenship. Despite the fact that citizenship has been diluted and abused in modern law and policy (e.g., “birthright” citizenship as currently practiced), Americans are still thankful and proud to be citizens of this great country. Within our federal constitutional structure, all Americans are dual citizens of their state and the national Constitution. Citizenship is the bedrock of American identity: by it we enjoy the rights, liberties, privileges, and immunities that we have by nature and that are legally protected in our constitutions; by it we hold our government accountable and prevent the onset of tyranny (at least in theory); by it we are Americans.
However, what few Americans realize is that the idea and practice of citizenship came into existence at the time of American independence. It is one area in which there was a clear break with English practice and tradition before it, a truly novel element of American polity. Under the English imperial system, all persons were “subjects,” not citizens. Consider how Douglas Bradburn describes it:
Every slave and slaveholder, every servant and master, every governor or tenant farmer, every Indian and courtier, every man, woman, and child throughout the British realms was considered a subject of the Crown and Parliament. It was the fundamental status of membership in the British Empire, and it did not imply any tangible relationship to the instruments of state policy—save for a presumption of dependency and filial, indeed perpetual, allegiance.
In England, subjectship was a function of the feudal system, and was intimately tied to land ownership and occupation. Because the sovereign (the king) owned all the lands of the commonwealth, those who resided on these lands owed the king their allegiance. Per the account of the great English jurist William Blackstone, “under the feudal system, every owner of lands held them in subjection to some superior or lord, from whom or whose ancestors the tenant or vasal had received them: and there was a mutual trust or confidence subsisting between the lord and vasal, that the lord should protect the vasal in the enjoyment of the territory he had granted him, and, on the other hand, that the vasal should be faithful to the lord and defend him against all his enemies” (Commentaries 1:354-55). Those born within the king’s domain were called natural-born subjects, and they were distinguished from aliens. Again, Blackstone explains the salient distinctions:
Natural-born subjects are such as are born within the dominions of the crown of England, that is, within the legeance, or as it is generally called, the allegiance of the king; and aliens, such as are born out of it. Allegiance is the tie, or ligamen [binding], which binds the subject to the king, in return for that protection which the king affords the subject (Commentaries, 1:354).
Thus, what distinguished subjects from aliens was their relationship to the king’s dominion at the time of their birth. A subject’s allegiance to the king was predicated upon his relationship to those lands under the king’s political domain; and the king’s duty of protection only extended to those subjects who lived under his territorial dominion.
In addition, a subject’s dependency upon the king and representation in the government was unequal and hierarchical. Some subjects made hereditary claims to the commonwealth; others propertied claims; and still others confessional or corporate claims. Thus, within the British system of constitutional monarchy (checked by parliamentary power), the King, House of Lords, and House of Commons all played a role in an interlocking but unequal system of political representation.
While Americans kept the ‘loyalty-for-protection’ exchange, they substituted citizen for subject and representative for king. The nature and loyalty of citizens, however, was qualitative difference than that of British subjects and their allegiance. In the 1795 Supreme Court decision of Talbot v. Janson (3 U.S. 3 Dall. 133), the Court opined on the nature of American citizenship:
Citizenship, which has arisen from the dissolution of the feudal system … is a substitute for allegiance, corresponding with the new order of things. Allegiance and citizenship, differ, indeed, in almost every characteristic. Citizenship is the effect of compact; allegiance is the offspring of power and necessity. Citizenship is a political tie; allegiance is a territorial tenure. Citizenship is the charter of equality; allegiance is a badge of inferiority. Citizenship is constitutional; allegiance is personal. Citizenship is freedom; allegiance is servitude. Citizenship is communicable; allegiance is repulsive. Citizenship may be relinquished; allegiance is perpetual. With such essential differences, the doctrine of allegiance is inapplicable to a system of citizenship; which it can neither serve to control, nor to elucidate (at 144).
Similarly, in his 1789 Dissertation on the Manner of Acquiring the Character and Privileges of a Citizen of the United States, historian David Ramsay argued that “A citizen of the United States, means a member of this new nation. The principle of government being radically changed by the revolution, the political character of the people was also changed from subject to citizen.” Ramsay went on to explain how “immense” of a difference this was: “subject is derived from the Latin words, sub and jacio, and means one who is under the power of another; but a citizen is an unit of a mass of free people, who, collectively, possess sovereignty.” Ramsay then elaborated, saying,
Subjects look up to a master, but citizens are so far equal, that none have hereditary rights superior to others. Each citizen of a free state contains, within himself, by nature and the constitution, as much as the common sovereignty as another. In the eye of reason and philosophy, the political condition of citizens is more exalted than that of noblemen. Dukes and earls are the creatures of kings, and may be made by them at pleasure; but citizens possess in their own right original sovereignty.
At the heart of the distinction between citizen and subject was the origin of the political community and the nature of sovereignty. American colonists from the very beginning had practiced a form of political compact or covenantalism, that mirrored church polity (most notably congregational, and then presbyterian, ecclesial order). Here existed fundamental equality, government by consent, and the protection of ancients rights and liberty; but all without an overly zealous “leveling” that would destroy all natural hierarchies (such as marriage and the family, or natural differences in talents or accomplishments). It is not surprising, then, that when Americans declared independence from Britain in 1776, they turned to their long-standing practice of political compact and covenant as the model for re-writing state constitutions and drafting a national constitution.
The new nation was formed on the basis of equal citizens joining together to collectively delegate their sovereignty to chosen representatives, and upon that basis to be loyal to their government if their government fulfilled its stated duties and obligations to the political community. Citizen loyalty was predicated upon political officials fulfilling their constitutional oaths; and political officials exercised a sovereignty not merely their own, but delegated by the people. While the Americans believed that government was a divine institution or office that had been created by God for man’s welfare and whose ends were determined by God, the people—and not a particular ruler—possessed the prerogative to elect their own representatives and hold them accountable. Government was from God but by the consent of the people.
Birthright Citizenship and the Right to Exclude
While there are many elements to this political system we could explore, two implications are particularly salient for our focus. The first is that citizenship in America can only come about by a person joining the body politic, and, conversely, the body politic agreeing to accept new members. This could happen either through birthright citizenship (i.e., a person being born to American citizens) or by a naturalization process (for immigrants). Critically, by rejecting the legeance model of subjectship, in which merely being born within a particular territory made one a subject of the political realm with all its attendant rights, privileges, and obligations, the Americans required some kind of consent in order to become a citizen: the consent of immigrants to leave their nation of origin and family ties, and to bind themselves to the new nation, its laws, and constitution; and the consent of citizen parents to raise their natural-born children to be good, faithful, and virtuous citizens who would come to love and serve their birth country. While the first was an explicit process of voluntary consent and verbal allegiance, the second was an organic process of inherited consent and habitual allegiance across generations.
Second, the American understanding of citizenship was predicated upon the right to exclude. When the Declaration of Independence was signed, American society was basically divided into three groups: those who supported independence, those who opposed it, and those who were unsure. With Independence declared and the war with Britain underway, many those who were loyal to Britain either left of their own accord or were driven out (although the majority stayed in America). The creation of a new body politic composed of republican citizens was an act that divided people; it drove out many and welcomed others.
The men who crafted and ratified the Constitution implicitly set parameters on the body politic: those who accepted the Constitution (whether enthusiastically or begrudgingly) agreed to live in a certain manner, to be a certain kind of people, and conduct themselves in a particular way. Those who refused to cooperate could be kicked out or forcibly subdued. In this sense, the American body politic was sovereign over itself, and could only be understood in contradistinction to all other political communities. The American citizen and our constitutional polity are the antithesis of the “global citizen” and universal, supranational political governance.
In addition, early immigration law in the United States sought to abide by and maintain the particular character of republican citizenship in the country. Not just anyone was allowed to enter; immigrants from England and northwest Europe were favored, and there were moral and ethnic conditions one had to pass. There was a residency period required of newcomers before they could become naturalized citizens as a way to force them to abandon ties and allegiances to their nation of birth, and so attach themselves to America. And naturalized immigrants had to take an explicit oath of allegiance to the United States Constitution. These stringent demands would discourage many from coming here or becoming citizens; American citizenship was only for the best, not the world’s tired, poor, and huddled masses.
National Sovereignty and Squatter’s ‘Rights’
The current practice of birthright citizenship in America—an erroneous interpretation and distortion of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause—represents a repudiation of republican citizenship in America. It is, in fact, a return to the legeance model of subjectship: for anyone who touches American soil and has a child while on American territory, that child becomes a “citizen” with all the attendant rights, privileges, and duties under the U.S. Constitution. On this vision, it doesn’t matter if immigration law has been violated, if the child is born to immigrants who crossed the border illegally, if they have avoided detention and deportation by taking refuge in a criminal sanctuary city, if they have leeched off the American taxpayer by receiving welfare benefits—it doesn’t matter that the American body politic may not want such persons as citizens—the sovereigns on the Supreme Court have decreed that they are citizens.
What’s going on with mass illegal immigration, anchor babies, and the usurpation of American citizenship and constitutional self-government by an activist and revolutionary Supreme Court is more than just liberalism and globalism gone awry. It signals a return to a much older understanding of national identity and a people’s relationship to physical place: the idea of the right of occupation. In De Officiis (On Duties) the Roman philosopher and statesman Cicero explained (in a somewhat startling manner for moderns) that private property is not a natural right: “To be sure, no property is private by nature, but rather owing to long-standing occupancy, as when a people formerly arrived at an unoccupied area; or to victory, as when they acquired it through warfare; or to law, agreement, contract, or lot” (I.21). Later in Book Two, Cicero grounds private property rights in the good of the commonwealth:
What is fundamental to a commonwealth [is] first, concord, which is not possible when, in remitting the debt of some, you steal the money of others; next, equity, which is utterly destroyed if one is not permitted to have what is his. For it is characteristic of a political community as well as a city … that each person controls his own property unimpeded and undisturbed (II.78).
While Americans like to think of property rights as being natural per a Lockean account found in the Second Treatise (mixing one’s labor with the land), the reality is that without political force to back up law and property rights—both privately and of the community—the claim to the rights to one’s country and land are meaningless.
Democrats encouraging illegal immigration know this; illegal aliens also know this. Their entire strategy revolves around a single idea: inertia. If fifteen or thirty or fifty million illegal immigrants can make it across the border and then settle all throughout the country; and if sanctuary cities and political representatives and common citizens all agitate or riot on their behalf; then it becomes virtually impossible to move such a large and incalcitrant mass of people. They will claim a right to America by sheer occupation—by the conquest of squatting. This is one of the oldest forms of conquest and can only be prevented kinetically.
The only way to preserve and reassert American sovereignty, constitutional self-government, and republican citizenship is to forcibly—and if necessary, violently—remove every last illegal alien in this country, and prosecute all those who have protected them. This is not optional if America is to remain America in any relevant political or historical sense. The right of American citizens to live peaceably in the land they have owned for hundreds of years, and to govern themselves by the governments they have established and the laws they have approved, must be backed by political force. This requires political will and wisdom—without which you will be overrun, your lands stolen, your governments co-opted, and you made a slave in your own country.
The Self-Preservation of the Republican Body-Politic
The illegal occupation by alien immigrants (and all those who have aided, abetted, and defended them) is nothing less than an assault upon the American body politic. It is a usurpation of American national sovereignty, an attack upon republican citizenship, an attempt to turn true American citizens into impoverished and impotent subjects in their own country. It is an invasion and an act of conquest; it is political treason to defend them, to obstruct their detention and removal, or to shelter them against remigration.
Mass deportations are very popular in America currently. Recent polls show that 86% of Republican voters support mass deportations, 58% of independents do, and only 25% of Democrats. That averages to over 56% of the American people support mass deportations. President Trump has a mandate to do now what no other president might ever achieve again. The time to establish the political mechanisms necessary to deport fifty million illegal aliens is now.
Those claiming that such a thing is impossible—that it is only feasible to deport 10% or less of all illegals, and that therefore we should once again consider a policy of mass amnesty—such persons are encouraging the subversion and overthrow of America. They have betrayed America and should be treated as traitors. The popularity of mass deportations that has galvanized public opinion and an acceptance of a ‘do-what-is-necessary’ policy, signals that the American body politic is not dead yet. It has mustered an antibody response to the threat posed by illegal aliens and all their sympathizers in America. The only question that remains is will the host successfully fight off this infection and emerge intact on the other end. Will the America people, as a body politic of free republican citizens, continue as a sovereign nation, or will they be forever extinguished?
Image Credit: Unsplash
