I’ve never taken my United States citizenship for granted. It’s a gift bequeathed to me by my Guatemalan immigrant parents. My right to be an American begins with the story of their arrival in this country. And it’s a piece of paper issued by Los Angeles County, my birth certificate.

There are millions of Americans like me. To the xenophobes, a Third World cloud hangs over us, children of the foreign born. Donald Trump began his rise to power by questioning the birthplace — and citizenship — of Barack Obama, one of our number who became president. In the story Mr. Trump tells about this country, we are part of an imaginary underground army of fake citizens and fake voters, undermining the real America.

Mr. Trump’s skepticism is now government policy. According to a report in The Washington Post, his administration is forcing hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lifelong American citizens of Latino descent to prove they are citizens. Some have been jailed in immigration detention centers, others stripped of their passports and stranded in foreign countries.

Read on, courtesy of The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/immigration-birth-certificates-texas.html