A single Tweet can inform the world how the Treason Bar and open-borders advocates deceive the public. The usual tactic by the Treason Bar is to include in their lies and deception a kernel of truth, but the rest is all lies, the purpose of which is to benefit mass legal and illegal immigration. Given the current controversy over the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require proof of citizenship before being allowed to register to vote, there are common lies that the Treason Bar and Democrats spread, mostly that large numbers of non-whites cannot obtain the documents needed to obtain identification or to establish citizenship, with immigrants of color hardest hit.
For those wondering why the Dems opposed the SAVE Act, here is a supercut of the House Dems’ arguments from the floor.
— Clandestine (@WarClandestine) July 11, 2024
They claim it’s a Republican conspiracy to prevent “black, brown, and LGBTQIA+” people from voting.
They claim it’s “xenophobic” and “anti-democratic” to… pic.twitter.com/kmYKoXRhQ3
Of course, the poster boy for the Treason Bar is involved: Aaron Reichlin-Melnick claims that requiring proof of citizenship is a hardship on the downtrodden.
A Big Smile for Aliens Voting Illegally
Actually, the government doesn't know this! There's no centralized registry of citizenship, and tons of people who were born in the era before computerized records, or who acquired citizenship from a birth abroad, or who were born at home, end up struggling to prove citizenship. https://t.co/butmF0q8BO
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@ReichlinMelnick) June 12, 2024
One Truth, Many Lies, Much Deceit
First, there is a kernel of truth. There is no central database of citizenship and some people alive today were born before widespread computerization of, presumably, birth records. However, there is a central database of aliens who were admitted for Lawful Permanent Residence (LPR) maintained by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) which can be searched to see if an LPR has registered to vote. Similarly, the same database records those LPRs who were naturalized. There is also a database of all aliens who were ever legally admitted to the United States. So, there are centralized computer databases of certain aliens and naturalized citizens that can be used to either verify citizenship for voting or to show a criminal act of registering to vote or voting by an alien. For some reason, Reichlin-Melnick does not mention that. Why not? Because it hurts his thesis that there are large groups of persons that might be wrongly prohibited from registering or voting.
Now, there are plenty of people alive today born before birth records were computerized, but all birth records have since been computerized, so it is not clear what Reichlin-Melnick means here. Likely it is a variation on the claim that some blacks or Hispanics were not born in a hospital or under the care of a physician, who can legally create a birth certificate. This is an old trope that was some time ago thrown out by the Supreme Court back in 2008 [Supreme Court Upholds Voter ID Law, unattributed, NBC News/AP, April 28, 2008].
But the deceit gets worse. Reichlin-Melnick introduces the immigration law angle, the complicated arena of derived citizenship. This is the most abused area of immigration law, where persons born overseas to one or more parents obtain U.S. citizenship through their parents, even though born abroad.
Just for the record, John McCain was a natural-born citizen, as when he was born in the Panama Canal Zone—the Zone was part of the United States. But for all others, there is a complicated chart of how citizenship is derived depending on how long an American citizen parent lived in the United States. Here are the details.. It is complicated. Here are the three nationality charts that, prior to 1992, legacy Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) trainees at the Immigration Officers Basic Training Course (IOBTC) had to memorize for their nationality law exams.
Fun fact: Allowing trainees to consult the charts in 1992 and afterward caused a decline in the pass rate of the nationality law exams. I was in one of the first classes of Immigration Inspectors that was allowed use of the charts during the two nationality law exams and we had several trainees fail those two exams.
Interestingly, the Jewish lobby in the United States even obtained their own special section of derived citizenship, that derived from grandparents, as so many Jews were leaving the United States to live in Israel and their children never spent sufficient time in the United States before the age of 21 that their children were ineligible for citizenship. Their lobbying efforts created a section of the law that allowed their grandparents to transmit citizenship.
But in the end, those with derived citizenship do not have a problem registering to vote because those persons eligible may and must obtain a Certificate of Citizenship at an American diplomatic post in the country where they live prior to travel to the United States. So Reichlin-Melnick is just being deceptive and dishonest when he claims that there is a problem with this subgroup of citizens having difficulty registering to vote. Their only difficulty is the initial claim to citizenship at an American diplomatic post, as those with derived citizenship being born overseas require an American passport to enter the United States.
Then we get the claim of those born at home not having evidence of birth in the United States. That is just not true; though the numbers of such people are not large, there is a legal process to record those births: delayed birth registration. This is no longer an issue. It might have been in the 1930s, but not anymore. The home birth movement is an exclusively white granola-cruncher thing, with there being only 51,642 annually [Home Births In The U.S. Increase To Highest Level In 30 Years, Center For Disease Control, November 17, 2022].
Unattended home births used to be for everyone, then the number of physicians increased, then it was only for poor people, then the welfare state expanded to every poor person, so now home births are like artisanal cheese, home brewing, and macramé: something esoteric and for a certain elite, or the Amish. Black and brown people are not popping out kids at home, they are doing it on the public dime at hospitals. Fun fact: Home birth is gaining in popularity among White Nationalists.
Reichlin-Melnick claims that this area of nationality law is so complicated that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is continuously picking up these people all the time, which is just an outright lie. Such arrests are few and far between, as those born abroad have to enter the United States after their birth abroad, and need a passport to do so!
The rules for people born abroad to derive citizenship are notoriously complicated, and require things like calculating how long the citizen parent live in the US after turning 14. That's often why citizens sometimes get picked up by ICE and put into removal proceedings.
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@ReichlinMelnick) June 12, 2024
No, This Is Not True As They Can’t Enter the U.S. Without a U.S. Passport
Interestingly, Reichlin-Melnick did not go to the old lie about Texas midwives. It is well established in immigration enforcement that if an officer encounters a Texas birth certificate issued by a midwife, then that document was fraudulently issued. In the 1980s and 1990s there was a huge ongoing criminal conspiracy among Texas midwives selling birth certificates to illegal aliens [Midwife Birth Certificates Tied To Immigration Problems Along Texas Border, by Gustavo Valdes and Catherine E. Shoichet, CNN, June 5, 2012]. I guess he just avoided this angle because of the widespread fraud.
Also unmentioned by Reichlin-Melnick are Social Security records that hold citizenship data, so, yes, there is an easily accessible database of almost all persons born or at least reaching majority, in the United States.
So Reichlin-Melnick lies cleverly, using a bit of truth to hide the lies. Given DHS and Social Security databases, the government can find out which registered voters are illegally voting. The most likely suspects in illegal voting, though, are legal aliens, not illegal aliens, as many legal aliens think they have the right to vote or are careless about which box they check when getting a driver’s license. In fact, we have too many aliens voting. In fact, on the larger issue of those aliens who are voting, DHS is doing nothing.
Reichlin-Melnick’s lies don’t stop at the oppressed. Supposedly there are American citizens who lack unexpired proof of citizenship.
And of course it’s not a “nothing” vote. Mandating proof of citizenship to vote isn’t free! It’ll impose tens (if not hundreds) of millions in compliance costs for states and local govs, and US citizens themselves who lack valid, unexpired proof of citizenship. For a fake fear!
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@ReichlinMelnick) July 10, 2024
Suddenly the Cost of Compliance Is a Problem
Not mentioned by Reichlin-Melnick is that birth certificates don’t expire, Certificates of Naturalization don’t expire, and Certificates of Citizenship don’t expire. Driver’s licenses, identification cards, and passports expire, but how low agency does one have to be to let those expire?
But then we get the claim that there is no problem. Apparently there is a problem documenting the voting habits of the undocumented.
New! To show what I meant by "extraordinarily few documented cases," I went to the lion's den—@Heritage's list of 1,513 voter fraud cases since 1982. https://t.co/vuZl5QrN4x
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@ReichlinMelnick) July 11, 2024
In total, Heritage lists just TEN cases of confirmed undocumented immigrants voting. In 40+ years. https://t.co/onsV7k7fmK pic.twitter.com/pVP57xqxOL
No Problem Here
Reichlin-Melnick does not mention that no one is actively pursuing these cases and that even when encountered by ICE and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the illegal voters or registrants are just told to go back to the Registrar of Voters and de-list themselves.
But in the end, Reichlin-Melnick admits that registering to vote is easy for aliens to do illegally. He just excuses it as a “mistake.”
In total, Heritage's list has just 68 cases of noncitizen voting, which is 4.5% of the total. The majority involve lawful permanent residents—people with green cards.
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@ReichlinMelnick) July 11, 2024
I did not tally cases involving noncitizens unlawfully registering to vote (often mistakes made at the DMV).
As if checking the citizenship box was a mistake while there was a green card sitting in their wallet at the same time.
So, according to Reichlin-Melnick, there is no problem: just ignore the evidence, addressing the problem is racist, and it’s too complicated to understand. That is just a list of excuses to let aliens vote.
