about this bunch: you are nearly certain to be proved right.
When I heard about Himself emceeing a naturalization ceremony in the White House for convention TV packaging, my first thought wasn’t of Hatch Act violations or hypocrisy on immigration. It was sorrow for those new citizens.
Having been privileged earlier this year to attend a friend’s naturalization, I thought about the years of work and bureaucratic maze-walking these men and women put in to earn a status we were lucky to be born owning and how crass the Self campaign was to hustle them in as props. I even wondered if the new citizens had been informed of Himself’s intent, but figured no one would be cynical enough to just co-opt one of the biggest days in someone’s life without their knowledge.
Silly me.
At least two of the immigrants who appeared in the naturalization ceremony that aired during the Republican National Convention on Tuesday night didn't know until "a few minutes before" that President Trump would be involved, nor did they have any idea the footage was going to be part of the convention, The Wall Street Journal reports.
While the two participants interviewed for the Journal’s story said they “didn’t mind” their naturalization being used in the convention, neither was informed beforehand that it would be.
The Washington Post reports the story of how one of them, Neimat Awadelseid of Sudan, had her naturalization hijacked for a political campaign:
“They said when they called us that it would be at the White House and that the president might be there or he might not. Until the last minute we didn’t know if he was going to be there or not,” Awadelseid said during an interview Wednesday. “And at the last minute when we went into the room they said, good news, he will be there.”
,,,
On Thursday night she received a call from immigration officials, she said, who told her the ceremony would be at the White House. Elated, she agreed to participate, and in subsequent days she received paperwork from the White House related to her security clearance. Awadelseid said she signed a media privacy release but was not aware how the ceremony would factor into the convention.
Maybe it was having recently seen, up close and in person, the truly magical moment when residents raise their hands and become citizens, but the idea of co-opting their long, patient struggles, re-branding one of the most important moment of their lives as if it were a leveraged hotel property, really soured my stomach.
(Aside: the Post story notes that, for one portion of her journey to citizen, Ms. Awadelseid held residence in the US under the temporary protected status program, which the master of ceremonies of her naturalization tried to revoke for her home country of Sudan, an effort blocked by a federal judge on the basis of the president’s manifest bigotry.)
