MAGA Desperate To Prove Superman Isn’t an Immigrant but the Law Is Clear
There’s a new Superman movie out this week and it’s proving to be the right-wing’s kryptonite.
In the lead up to the film’s release, the folks behind the movie have been up front that it’s an immigrant story. This shouldn’t come as a shock since the character is almost a century old and has been an immigrant THE WHOLE TIME, but since the conservative movement is just a bad-faith book club for people who never read the book, they’ve launched a broadside against the movie.
What does that even mean? Orphans from other countries cease to be immigrants? That’s would be news to the 3-year-olds defending themselves in immigration court if they were allowed social media in their cages. Is he making a scienter argument that a child arriving in this country through no act of their own deserves citizenship? The Fifth Circuit disagrees. But even DACA is about a path to legal status… they’re still immigrants.
As an aside, imagine being Steeze and knowing that no matter what vile, insipid garbage you put out, you’ll never even be the most vile or insipid Stephen Miller out there. That’s got to be rough.
Superman’s creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, drew upon their experience as the children of Jewish immigrants, unveiling an American hero who came to the country as a refugee. It’s a message that hit hard in the late-1930s as American nativism closed doors on European Jews trying to flee. That the purest expression of all-American idealism is an immigrant is the core of the character — he’s compelling because he’s America’s savior not because he was born here, but because he believes in what “here” can be. Stripping the character of that context is like having Peter Parker’s Uncle move to Boca and die of old age.
It’s one thing to not understand the character, but — the even greater sin — it doesn’t make any sense legally.
Clark Kent was not born in the United States. Neither of his parents were citizens. He arrived as an undocumented, unaccompanied minor.
That sure seems like an immigrant under all applicable laws. The Kents took on the job of raising him, adoption doesn’t automatically confer citizenship under U.S. law. Even if the Kents tried to go through the legal process of adopting him instead of just lying about it. If they’re just sponsoring an undocumented minor, they’d best watch their back because the Trump administration has begun a systematic crackdown on those sponsors too— ostensibly for child safety — looking to separate kids from their caregivers and then… oops, there’s no one to watch them so it’s time to send them back!
Where would they even send Clark with Krypton gone? Well, South Sudan is lovely this time of year.
Clark could potentially benefit from the Foundling Statute — 8 U.S. Code § 1401(f) — providing that anyone of “unknown parentage found in the United States while under the age of five years” is presumptively a U.S. citizen unless proof of being born elsewhere is established prior to turning 21. But the proverbial ship on that one sailed when the Kents found his literal ship. It’s a difficult presumption to maintain when you’re holding the kid’s interstellar Uber in the barn.
And the Foundling law is predicated on birthright citizenship — since it turns on the idea that a 4-year-old in the country was probably born here and therefore a citizen — and the same people who don’t want Superman to be an immigrant aren’t too crazy about birthright citizenship. There’s actually a dumb alternate Superman origin where his escape pod was actually a birthing module, meaning he was actually “born” in Kansas. Randy Barnett and Ilan Wurman are already working on the op-ed explaining why that shouldn’t matter.
Oh, Superman is an asylum seeker? Great point. The administration is nabbing asylum seekers from court hearings and disregarding orders barring deportation. He has nowhere to go back to? DHS is happy to find a third country for him… indeed, they won’t even let him seek asylum without checking in with another country first. . He has unique talents that benefit the country as described by the EB-1A visa? That requires pre-existing acclaim in the candidate’s specific field. DHS requires the immigrant to show up with an Oscar or a Pulitzer in hand to qualify (seriously, those are specific examples from the USCIS website. Superman didn’t have pre-existing acclaim as a baby. As a baby he was just a potty training nightmare for the Kents. And as for his talents outside of superpowers, I think Lois is the one winning a Pulitzer, not Clark. But at least Travis is trying to make MAGA accept immigrant Superman instead of reject him out of hand.
But what he doesn’t get is that they don’t want to accept an immigrant. Now that they’ve thrown off the hood — or put it on as the case may be — and decided good immigrants don’t exist unless mail-ordered by an incel. The assimilationist narrative that Travis wants has always been there for Superman too, but what’s raising conservative hackles is they don’t want assimilation, they just want them out. So they’re tying themselves in knots trying to figure out how the last son of Krypton is really a son of Kansas because they don’t want EB-1A Clark Kent, they need him to not be an immigrant at all. And there’s no good argument for that.
And just wait until they hear about his cousin Kara chain migrating.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
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