Kudos to the Washington Post for breaking the horrific news that the State Department is denying passports to U.S. citizens with official birth certificates:
The Trump administration is accusing hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Hispanics along the border of using fraudulent birth certificates since they were babies, and it is undertaking a widespread crackdown on their citizenship.
It sounds like they aren’t automatically denying passport applications, but they are telling applicants that official birth records are no longer valid to establish citizenship. And given that official birth certificates have been valid for establishing citizenship for decades, who has alternate records? What would valid alternate records even look like, if people had known to keep them?
Let’s not forget that the United States elected a President who still disputes the validity of the birth certificate of the first African-American President of the United States. This shouldn’t be a surprise.
Further, this move seems to be particularly targeting Hispanics born in south Texas. I doubt this is some bug in the system, no, it’s a feature. This is what Trump voters voted for. They voted for someone willing to deport all the people of color in this country.
This was never about “illegal immigration”, either. They’ve been trying to shut down the “legal” means of immigration for awhile now. If you understand racialist fascism, of course targeting citizens of certain ethnicities is the next step. It’s what they do.
This story is already getting picked up by other outlets, and I appreciate New York Magazine’s take on the issue in particular. If you get hit with the WaPo paywall, I suggest reading their coverage of this new Kafkaesque nightmare.