Immigration's twisted new reality is beneath America

The Hill

a day ago

Although it sounds like the premise for an absurdist sitcom or a dystopian novel, it seems that the Department of Homeland Security has actually considered participating in a reality show where 'legal immigrants' would compete for a fast track to U.S. citizenship.
It took Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem nearly a week to deny the reports. Contradicting agency spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin, who told Fox News that it 'may be a good idea' for reviving 'patriotism and civic duty,' Noem told the Senate Committee on Homeland Security that 'there are no plans whatsoever to do a reality show.'
That is probably just as well, because it isn't clear that Noem herself could pass a civics test, given her bizarre assertion in Senate testimony that President Donald Trump has the right to suspend Habeas Corpus 'to remove people from this country.'
According to the Wall Street Journal, the reality show pitch came from Rob Worsoff, a producer of 'Duck Dynasty.' He explained that the show would be a 'celebration' of what it means to be an American citizen, in which contestants 'compete in various contests, including potentially on American history and science.'
The winners would have their citizenship applications expedited — ideally sworn in on the steps of the U.S. Capitol — but the losers would not be deported or otherwise penalized a la 'The Hunger Games.'
The various challenges in Worsoff's pitch, as outlined in a 36-slide deck, include such quintessentially American activities as gold mining and automobile assembly, while the contestants travel cross-country. The competition would have kicked off at Ellis Island, where no immigrants have entered the U.S. since 1943.
Meanwhile, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a department of Homeland Security, still administers an actual civics examination as part of the naturalization process.
Applicants are asked 10 questions, chosen by an examiner from a list of 100, with a passing score of six correct answers. Citizenship and Immigration also provides a study guide with approved answers (while noting that other responses might perhaps be acceptable, at the discretion of the examiner).
The objective is to test the aspiring citizen's knowledge of U.S. civics, history and government, but Republican presidential administrations have repeatedly revised and politicized both the questions and the published set of approved answers.
During the George W. Bush administration, for example, the test asked applicants to name an 'inalienable right.' Predictably, one of the approved answers was the right to bear arms, which could always be removed, that is, alienated, from convicted felons and domestic abusers.
The first Donald Trump administration was worse. The battery of 10 questions was increased to 20 (from a set of 128), with 12 required to pass, making it incrementally harder to obtain citizenship.
Under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, correct answers were provided to the questions about congressional representation. Senators represent 'all the people of the state,' and members of Congress represent 'all the people of their district.'
In Trump's first term, however, those answers were altered, wrongly, to say that senators and House members represent only 'citizens' — again seeking to marginalize immigrants, despite the Constitution's requirement of apportionment according to an 'actual enumeration' of 'persons' in the various states.
The correct answers were restored under President Joe Biden, and the number of questions to each applicant went back to 10, with a passing score of six. Neither correction has yet been reversed by Noem or Trump, but there is no telling what is in the works.
There is one aspect of the citizenship test, unchanged from administration to administration, that must surely please the Trump administration.
One question on the current test, which has appeared in some form since at least the Bush II presidency, asks for 'two rights of everyone living in the United States,' with only the following recommended answers in the study guide:
Conspicuously missing from the answer list are the rights to counsel, due process, equal protection and freedom from cruel and unusual punishment or unreasonable search and seizure. An applicant who identified one of those rights would risk being marked wrong, although they are plainly found in the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth and 14th Amendments.
Most ominously, or perhaps providentially from Noem's perspective, there is also no mention of Habeas Corpus, the right to challenge one's incarceration before a judge.
Habeas Corpus, also called 'the Great Writ,' is guaranteed in Article I, making it the only individual right found in the original body of the Constitution. It can only be suspended by Congress, not the president, in cases of 'rebellion or invasion.' Habeas Corpus provides the ultimate protection against arbitrary imprisonment. Without it, there could be no meaningful rights at all against an oppressive government.
In times like these, that is something both migrants and citizens ought to know about.
Because we are not living in a reality show.
Steven Lubet is the Williams Memorial Professor at the Northwestern University School of Law. He is the author of 'The Trials of Rasmea Odeh: How a Palestinian Guerrilla Gained and Lost U.S. Citizenship.'