Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti speaks at the Franklin Theatre, May 8, 2023
Noted Federalist Society member and Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti is going after birthright citizenship. In an amicus brief recently filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, Skrmetti whines about how it isn’t fair that we don’t go by the original interpretation of birthright citizenship, which, he argues, is being too freely given to all babies who are born here.
True. True. These babies are getting way too cocky with their crying and their pooping and their crawling all over everything like they own the joint. Someone needs to knock those babies down a peg or two, and Jonathan Skrmetti is going to do it. I fully expect we’ll soon enough see him standing in front of a cage full of babies in El Salvador.
I’m not a lawyer, but I looked up the definition of "amicus brief" — it’s essentially when you give friendly advice about crap that doesn’t directly involve you. That’s my whole thing! So consider this my amicus brief to be filed with Jonathan Skrmetti.
Jonathan. Please allow me to go by first names here, for reasons that will become obvious in a moment. Jonathan, in 1924, Congress passed the Johnson-Reed Act, which put limitations on who could come to the United States and thus limited who could become citizens. Immigration from Southern European and Eastern European countries was severely limited. Your family was lucky. Your great-grandfather John Skrmtte naturalized before we succumbed to that bout of anti-immigrant madness. Your grand-uncle Nick Skrmetta was his witness. But your grandfather, Paul Skrmotta, naturalized a year after Johnson-Reed passed.
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I checked out all the ways your family has spelled their name over the years. In addition to all the variations y’all naturalized under, in 1930 you were spelling it Skirmetta or Scarmetti. I even found a newspaper clipping where your family was doing a fundraiser for a hospital and spelling it Skarmetta.
Here’s another tricky thing. When was John’s birthday? On his naturalization paperwork, he writes, “April 23, 1852,” but a lot of people in your family seem to think his birthday was April 15, 1852.
Jonathan, here is my question for you: How fishy do you think this is? I, myself, here in 2025 find none of this suspicious. People are trying to render their last name from one language into another, and so weird shit will result. I’m not even sure a regular person could have gotten a typewriter back then that would make the little doodad above the S in Škrmeta, so you were bound to end up with something different than you left Dalmatia with. And the birthday? It depends on which calendar he was using, doesn’t it?
But Jonathan, you write: “The American people are the ultimate source of authority and legitimacy for every branch of our government, and every court interpreting the Constitution must therefore adhere to the understanding of the voters who adopted the constitutional language” (emphasis mine). That means if the people who approved birthright citizenship only meant for it to apply to the children of former slaves, then by God, that’s all it can ever apply to.
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And if I adopt the racist and xenophobic anti-Eastern European and anti-Southern European sentiment of the people who passed the Johnson-Reed Act, then your grandfather doesn’t cut it. He doesn’t have a firm birthdate. He doesn’t have the same last name as his dad, or even the same last name over time. He was required by law to be literate, but he couldn’t spell his last name? I don’t even have to try very hard to come up with evidence that people in 1924 would have found compelling to show that your grandfather didn’t come here “the right way” and that his citizenship isn’t legit.
And by your own stupid argument, I’m right to hold him to the standards of a 1924 racist, which means your dad, the son of a man we’ve just established was an undocumented immigrant, got his birthright citizenship through the very means you’re trying to make impossible. Thus making your citizenship suspect. Are you going to self-deport?
[Crickets.]
Sir, you went to Harvard Law School. You are not this dumb. You’re just being cruel. And you should be ashamed of yourself. I spent a whole afternoon reading about your family, how they served this country honorably whenever we’ve needed them, how they did fundraisers and were active church-goers and were well-respected. We as a nation are better off for them being here, even if racists of the 1920s didn’t want them. Someone believed they would make good Americans, and they did! And you can’t extend the same faith that these little kids will also grow up to contribute, even if their parents came here in sketchy ways? What a terrible, sad twist to the grand Skrmetti legacy.
