-OpEd-
TURIN — Among all of what U.S. President Donald Trump said and did on his inauguration day, nothing struck me more than his signature on the decree abolishing the ius soli, the law that grants U.S. citizenship to anyone born on American soil.
For the latest news & views from every corner of the world, Worldcrunch Today is the only truly international newsletter. Sign up here.
No, nothing that Trump said or did introduces his new America like that signature — it is a stroke of the pen that wipes away the profound sense of love that I, and so many others, have for a country that, otherwise, we can and should feel free to criticize for so much: atomic weapons, slavery, the extermination of Native Americans.
The end of a dream
But what had long remained the central point to admire was as the original nation in the world born not in the name of a race, not in the name of blood, not in the name of power, not in the name of a religion; but in the name of an idea, betrayed a thousand times, yet always pursued: the welcome to anyone fleeing persecution for reasons of race, blood, power, religion, anyone fleeing war, anyone fleeing hunger.
If America was a country born on an idea, now it is a country that no longer believes in that idea.
Anyone could come to America, live freely, pursue their dream. So it has been for centuries, since the Pilgrim Fathers of the Mayflower landed on Plymouth Rock, in present-day Massachusetts, in 1620, to seek a future far from the oppression of the Church of England.
Appeals against Trump’s decree were immediately filed, but whether they are accepted or not the point: if America was a country born on an idea – come here, everyone, to help make America great – now it is a country that no longer believes in that idea.
Indeed, this new America denies and curses that founding idea: Everyone out, we have to make America great again. Maybe the American dream was just a dream after all — waking up from it is hard for us all.
