What if you're not a "citizen"?

The rhetoric of using "citizen" to mean "people" excludes the non-citizens. In America that means aliens with green cards and without.

Historically, the impediments to citizenship were put up against native americans, asians, and latin americans. The last group that could become citizens were a number of asian nationalities. The laws were changed in the 1950's.

The Happy Days weren't so happy for people who were under the heel of legislative racism, segregation, and restrictive covenants.

When you talk about "citizens" you're not just talking about a privileged group in the society, you're also recalling the history of laws that govern citizenship. These laws, until Brown v. Board, and later Civil Rights laws, were racist.

Lately, we've started seeing a lot of rollbacks. The large scale rollback/takeback of affirmative action is going to privilege only some whites, specifically, middle class whites. (The poor ones are not invited, so, git back to yer trailers.)

The pressures to close the borders and to take entitlements away from (legal) resident aliens is patently unfair. They pay taxes, and are entitled to the benefits. Taking these benefits away is a vindictive punishment. As it is, it takes 8 years for someone to gain citizenship. For a laborer, it's even longer because they often have to come over illegally and work underground for a decade before their 8 years can begin. That's 18 years of paying taxes without expectation of benefits.

If you want to be a citizen, be a citizen of the world, or be a citizen of your community. Don't be a citizen-leech who takes on the benefits of national citizenship and excludes them from non-citizens.