Surviving Autocracy

by Masha Gessen

In February 2018, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency that handles visas, green cards, and naturalization, revised its mission statement. It had begun, “USCIS secures America’s promise as a nation of immigrants.” The phrase “nation of immigrants,” which generations of Americans had learned as children, was, like most national myths and more than some, a lie: the United States was a settler colonialist nation whose economy was rooted in the enslavement of Africans forcibly brought to its shores. The new statement dropped the phrase altogether. This had nothing to do with correcting the record—it was part of the Trumpian project to redefine America in nationalist, nativist terms. The old mission statement put forth the agency’s function as “granting immigration and citizenship benefits, promoting an awareness and understanding of citizenship, and ensuring the integrity of our immigration system.” The new statement defined it as “administer[ing] the nation’s lawful immigration system . . . while protecting Americans, securing the homeland, and honoring our values.” The new statement, in other words, made it clear that immigrants and Americans are two distinct groups that exist in opposition to each other. Immigrants, it indicated, are not Americans, now or in the future. Americans need to be protected from immigrants. This was a radical narrowing of the definition of “us.” It was also an act of closing the community of “us” to those not already i...