The American Soul is Within Bureaucratic Reach

Speaking at a California gathering, Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter recently argued in favor of deporting children whose parents are undocumented, even if these children were born in the U.S. Thank goodness my father had just secured his documented status shortly before I was born. Otherwise, had this tyrannical mentality been instituted in the late 70’s, I might have taken my first breath while in the arms of a deportation agent.

There was a time when I dismissed this type of absurd and ignorant statement as just that — absurd and ignorant. But these days, I’m definitely paying attention. After all, with Arizona beginning to mirror apartheid-era South Africa, deporting U.S.-born brown children may be unconstitutional, but it's certainly aligned with the anti-immigrant sentiment of our times.

However perturbing Congressman Hunter’s support of such a policy is, I want to believe it was said with the goal of agitating his base — that it was a kind of posturing to prove the extent of his anti-immigrant stance. While I don't take any of his words lightly, I'm more concerned by how the Congressman's words represent a set of insidious values that undergirds the anti-immigrant movement, which Hunter illuminates, in his attempt to assure the crowd that he’s not mean-spirited:

“And we're not being mean," he said. "We're just saying it takes more than walking across the border to become an American citizen.”

Apparently Congressman Hunter’s ignorance of the childbirth process is as profound as his attitudes on race. I am not a father and have not witnessed the birth of a child. However, even with my limited experience I’m certain newborn children do not walk, and are therefore unable to trek across the border to become an American citizen. Fortunately, children do not have to commit this miraculous act, and instead only need to be born within the legal borders of the U.S. or in U.S.-occupied territories, which we sometimes like to call commonwealths. Clearly, there are other processes to become an American citizen, even for infants, but I highlight this one to zero in on Congressman Hunter’s argument.

But wait, there’s more. Congressman Hunter then went on to imply that the divine state of being an American citizen rested, of all qualities, on “what’s in our souls.”

Based on Congressman Hunter’s doctrine, there is a spiritual phenomenon that causes U.S.-born children to be born with a uniquely American soul. The only apparent caveat is that the parents of such children must be documented at the time of their child's birth; otherwise the soul is disqualified. So here we have an elected official representing a party that purports to want less government, who's tying the divine state of having an American soul to the bureaucratic process of getting documented? To me, this sounds like a government so big that it meddles with holy jurisdiction. I’m pretty sure having a government that presides over the work of the Christian god is as big as a government can get. Which begs the question, why are Republicans like Hunter so adamant about worshiping a god who, by every qualifier they support, lacks an American soul?

Photo Credit: Francesco Rachello