RUTHFULLY YOURS

The left-leaning Open Society, lavishly funded by moneybags darling of the left, octogenarian George Soros, has just published a 194-page ‘report’ on a process I’ll wager not more than 1% of  readers are aware of: denaturalizing  questionable citizens.

Maybe that should read “citizens,” since the government is not, contrary to the notably omission-laden materials by the ACLU and the Society, pursuing legitimately naturalized persons who became so with no shadowy elements attached to their by-now geriatric citizenship sacrament.

During the past three decades, according to a document put out by the ‘always-scrupulous’ ACLU, denaturalizations were pursued an average of 11 times per year. But under the Trump Administration, this jumped in 2017 to 95 cases referred by the Department of Homeland Security. That was bumped up to some 1600 cases by the U.S. Citizenship and  Immigration Services, as of 2018.  Then comes 2019, and in its budget request, the  U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) indicated its intention to review the files of an additional — hold onto your MAGA hats — 700,000, for which they requested funding of an additional $200 million.

In this document, as in the panel discussion attended in mid-September with four key researcher-writers — including the Senior Managing Legal Officer of the Open Society Justice Initiative Laura Bingham — this process of re-examining questionable naturalizations, without proper documents, or with unsettled legal issues of provenance and possible prior criminality,  this effort “throws away standards, due process, fairness, and devaluing the sanctity [sanctity, mind you] of American citizenship.”

I listened with astonishment that made my neutral face in the second row of the well-appointed auditorium at Soros’ Open Society HQ nearly congeal in a revealing mask of disbelief and near-jeering. I had as usual registered under an alias. I had to maintain a veneer of agreement with the goings-on.

The process is wedded securely to the idea of re-examining perhaps false applications, and false  procurements of that invaluable commodity, American citizenship. It is the very opposite of throwing away standards, due process, fairness, or the most absurd assertion, devaluing American citizenship. In fact, it tries to reassert the impregnable truth of the process by which non-birthright persons attain citizenship.

At the introduction, an unexpected moment of truth issued from the mouth of Mr. Jim Gaspard, an original Haitian, who left with his family to reside in Africa before they all  made their way to the United States, where his family all applied for citizenship in the same traditional way I applied. Gaspard actually said that the process of naturalizing peoples is about, “make no mistake,” the vote.

I did not have the heart, or the early courage, to insert “…but all the votes go one way, and all of them are for leftists and Democrats,” never for conservatives or Republicans.

Other ironies piled up during the two-hour panel discussion. The four discussants were two women who said they had, before the advent of #45, worked for Homeland Security, one Indian and one Muslim in a hijab. An ethnic American from Asia somewhere, who worked in naturalization cases, and the willowy Caucasian, Laura, completed the panel.

Though I kept my hand up as soon as the panel moderator suggested it was time for Q and A, I was ignored through several rounds of adoring and reinforcing questions. One remarkable, if to me jocular, question asked if anyone in the audience could please compare the night’s proceedings with those of, ah, the McCarthy hearings, which took place in 1953-54.

Which would mean that there would have been in the approximately 90/100-person crowd a few who were adult at the hearings, since children don’t attend such events, several attendees well into their late 80s or 90s.

No one, obviously, raised a hand as having been witness to McCarthy.

The evening was based on the publication (by the Open Society Justice Initiative) of  the study group’s 194-page report, titled “Unmaking Americans: Insecure Citizenship in the United States,” It includes 32 pages of “endnotes” and covers some of the same ground Ann Coulter covered in her 2015 book, Adios America!

No small part of the enthusiasm  always shown these false-flag evenings that purport to take down aspects of Donald Trump’s America is the sumptuous table laid for attendees, with a full panoply of savories, battered shrimp, samosas, dips, crudites, spreads of fresh fruit. Desserts greet departing guests, often consisting of chocolate-tipped strawberries, truffles, more fruit, a selection of cookies. There is also always a barrista serving free drinks. At 5:30, most  attendees are coming from work, and they are hungry. How to stave off free victuals, sweets, and even wine or beer or soft drinks.

A wise seducer, Soros always supplies that table groanng with delices. I find the mood of attendees very welcoming, the men and women giving away books and literature always full of  almost Mormonesque charm and bonhomie.  The poor panels of the right rarely have even water  for their intellectual buffets.

Attendees spanned the generations from Millennials to Boomers. Trump was scarcely mentioned by name, but the term “current administration” was laced with icicles and venom. Not a single person recognized that “children in cages, separated from their parents” began under President Obama. No one had anything but contempt for the efforts or programs of the Trump presidency.

Though my hand was up for at least half an hour, I was not called upon. Finally, at 7:30, at close of evening, the last one to be ”noticed” and called upon, my question was asked, innocently and disingenuously: why no one had mentioned yet that the 14^th Amendment, which sanctifies birth citizenship for  anyone intrepid enough to stumble under a fence or over an unmonitored border, pregnant, then giving birth… to an instant American. Why no one had mentioned that  the 14^th Amendment was written to ease the lot of the newly emancipated slaves of the period, not millions of random pregnant women from a Sargasso of countries doing birthright tourism and the like. Trolling for free welfare and entitlements, goodies to which they are not entitled.

But I needn’t have asked. No one bothered to answer my nervy question, though the  questions preceding mine were given respectful, lengthy replies. My pushy query was the crux of the issue: They’d keen saying how immigrants (no distinction made between aliens and legal citizen immigrants) scrambling through the  brush were following the Constitution.

As we all left the room, one lone woman smiled brightly at me and gave me the high sign. She of all the attendees apparently approved of my question. I smiled back, uncertain whether she knew that behind my politesse was mockery of the panel, and the evening, and that 194-page tome of complaint that the United States would dare revisit the hapless or mistaken award of our most precious right.

No mention of any of the manifold reasons for denial or repossession of passports and revocation of citizenship.  The plight, they asserted often, of the “stateless” was indeed “terrible.” No mention of gangs flooding across the Southern borders. No mention of sex trafficking or child recycling as cover for entry through our ICE agents. No mention of  waves of increased crime, vandalism, rape, destruction of various sorts.

Next time, I think, I’ll come with a small child, maybe,  and get more immediate attention for pestilential and righteously unanswerable questions.