When I was in the Army and stationed at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, you could not start the day in the mess hall without reading the obituaries in the The Leaf Chronicle. The obituary writer was really good at his or her job, and could make the most mundane life sound like it was full of fun and excitement. The one that sticks in my mind all these years later is a tribute to an 87-year-old woman who had passed away. She had lived in Clarksville, Tennessee, for almost her entire life. Her family moved there when she was just one year old. Her obituary started out like this: “Though she was not one us ...”
Those words came to mind during the past week, when the Supreme Court may have tipped its hand about the hard line being taken in immigration cases. During arguments for Maslenjak v. United States, the justices seemed somewhat incredulous over the government’s defense for taking a naturalized U.S. citizen’s citizenship away. To be fair, Divna Maslenjak is not a sympathetic figure:
She was granted refugee status … in 1999 and became a United States citizen in 2007.
Along the way, she apparently lied about her husband, saying she and her family had also feared retributions because he had avoided conscription by the Bosnian Serb military. In fact, he had served in a Bosnian Serb military unit, one that had been implicated in war crimes.
The case revolves around her citizenship being revoked over this lie, whether it was deliberate or an omission, and whether or not the correct standard was applied during her trial.
Based on the questions asked by the justices, they are not convinced that she was tried under the correct standard.
Chief Justice John Roberts asked:
“Some time ago, outside the statute of limitations, I drove 60 miles an hour in a 55-mile-an-hour zone,” the chief justice said, adding that he had not been caught.
The form that people seeking American citizenship must complete, he added, asks whether the applicant had ever committed a criminal offense, however minor, even if there was no arrest.
“If I answer that question now, 20 years after I was naturalized as a citizen, you can knock on my door and say, ‘Guess what, you’re not an American citizen after all’?”
Other justices seemed just as taken aback by the government’s argument.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy had heard enough.
“Your argument is demeaning the priceless value of citizenship,” he told Mr. Parker. “You’re arguing for the government of the United States, talking about what citizenship is and ought to mean.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked about the failure to disclose an embarrassing childhood nickname. Justice Elena Kagan said she was a “little bit horrified to know that every time I lie about my weight it has those kinds of consequences.”
Naturalized citizens losing their citizenship is not without precedent. The vast majority of people who have been stripped of their citizenship were guilty of Nazi war crimes during World War II and clearly should have had their citizenship revoked. In this case, based on the questions asked and the statements made by the justices, the Supreme Court seems to feel that it should take an extraordinary reason to have one’s citizenship revoked.
Again, Divna Maslenjak and her husband are not sympathetic figures. But what about a man who moved to the United States when he was 10 years old? He became a citizen, and by all rights was an upstanding one for 55 years. He went to college, became a teacher, and taught drama for 37 years.
This man, Ruben Van Kempen, by all accounts has been an exemplary citizen. He said, ”I haven’t thought of myself as an immigrant for decades.” That is until he went to apply for Social Security.
...after he submitted his U.S. passport, his Social Security card and his naturalization certificate from the day he was sworn in, Social Security wrote back that his application “could not be processed” due to questions about his immigration status.
Mr. Van Kempen says, "Now that they’re talking about me as an alien, I do feel a little like a stranger in a strange land.” It seems that the Department of Homeland Security cannot verify his immigration status—even though he has a naturalization certificate from 1982 signed and stamped by U.S. District Court officials in Seattle.
This will likely turn out to be a case of someone in the Social Security office checking the wrong box on a form. However, this mistake will not be cheap for Mr. Van Kempen:
His uncertain status is about to start costing him real money. He turns 65 on May 7, this Sunday. Without the Medicare coverage he was counting on (and that he paid 37 years of payroll taxes for), he says he’ll have to pay $625 per month for private insurance.
None of this should be happening. Van Kempen provided the required documentation and none of it is counterfeit, so both the Social Security office and Homeland Security should be able to verify his citizenship rather easily. But in a time when immigrants are the enemy, no one is above suspicion. Van Kempen has lived here for 55 years and been an American citizen for 35. There is no reason he should feel like a stranger in a strange land.
Everyone, unless you are a Native American, has family that came from somewhere else. But in Trump’s America, one has to ask: is this what we have become? Are we now a place where if you were not born here, you are “not one of us”?
Seems like a lot of folks have forgotten we are a nation of immigrants.