Trump's Attacks on the Lawyer Who Argued Birthright Citizenship Give the Game Away

Cecillia Wang, head of the ACLU, asked the Supreme Court to preserve birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment. Born in Oregon to Taiwanese immigrants, she defended a doctrine that she also benefited from. After oral argument, interest in her background increased, along with right-wing backlash. A right-wing podcast attacked her character and argued that families from countries such as China and India do not integrate like European American immigrants, using “melting pot” versus “chamber pot” language. The claim is easy to refute on language acquisition rates, which are high, but difficult because “assimilation” and “integration” arguments are not neutral civic concerns. The attacks also ignore evidence that Wang has worked within major American institutions.

"Last month, Cecillia Wang, the head of the ACLU, asked the Supreme Court to preserve birthright citizenship, a pillar of the 14 th Amendment. Born in Oregon to Taiwanese immigrants, Wang is herself a beneficiary of the doctrine she defended during the historic oral argument-as am I. Following the argument, interest in her background exploded."

"The host of the right-wing podcast The Savage Nation, for example, told his listeners that Wang is "very smart, very evil, and very devious." He then widened his lens, claiming that families that come from "hellhole" countries like China and India do not "integrate" as European American immigrants did. Instead, he said, they have converted our "melting pot" into a "chamber pot." The transcript of the podcast went viral. President Donald Trump reposted it in full."

"The assertion that Asian Americans and other nonwhite immigrants don't "assimilate"-a freighted term, to be sure-is both easy and hard to refute. Easy because it is demonstrably false: The English language acquisition rate among immigrants, for example, was relatively high even at the turn of the 20 th century. Today it's even higher, at 91 percent."

"While "assimilation" and "integration" arguments present themselves as a neutral, civic concern about internal cohesion, they're anything but. The podcast suggests that Asian Americans as a whole cannot integrate. Yet it simultaneously professes anxiety about an Asian American who has decidedly not stood apart from American institutions and culture: After graduating from Yale Law School, Wang clerked for two Supreme Court justices."

Read at Slate Magazine