Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee has introduced a bill called the Remigration Act, and the name alone is doing a lot of heavy lifting. The legislation, as The American Tribune reported, would revoke the citizenship and immigration status of individuals caught violating American laws, defrauding taxpayers, supporting terrorism, or threatening national security. So basically, if you came here and immediately started acting like a supervillain, the bill says you get a one way ticket home.
Here is how it works. If an illegal alien is convicted of aggravated felonies, government benefits fraud, or other serious federal crimes, or if they provide material support for a foreign terrorist group within ten years of naturalization, their citizenship gets revoked. That is a pretty generous ten year window to not commit terrorism, which seems like a low bar, but here we are.
The bill also creates a task force within the Department of Homeland Security to review asylum, refugee, and adjustment of status grants issued between January 20, 2021, and January 20, 2025. That would be the entirety of the Biden administration, for those keeping score at home. The task force would check whether those grants actually lined up with immigration law, which is a little like auditing your teenager's expense reports after they had unsupervised access to your credit card for four years.
Another provision would require naturalization applicants to be proficient in English, which Ogles argues is a public safety measure. The reasoning is that people working in transportation need to be able to read road signs. If you have driven on American highways recently, you might argue that plenty of native born citizens could use a refresher course on that front too.
The Remigration Act would also end birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants and make it possible to deport illegal aliens who make anti-American statements or have affiliations threatening national security.
According to a press release from Ogles' office, individuals convicted of serious crimes will have their nonimmigrant status revoked, and specific immigration benefits for nationals from countries deemed high risk would also be pulled.
"America is not a dumping ground for criminals, terrorists, fraudsters, or people who hate our country," Ogles said. "If you abuse our generosity, break our laws, or threaten our people, you should be sent home."
He added: "Citizenship should mean something. Assimilation should mean something. This bill puts Americans first and restores sovereignty to our immigration system."
The bill has its fans on social media, many of whom were enthusiastic about its potential application to certain public officials they find insufficiently patriotic. One user, Steven Chavez, supported the concept but raised a practical concern: "Yet what do we do with all of the gullible voters in NYC, they're not going to change their minds until the food riots outside government grocery stores."
Whether the Remigration Act has enough support to actually pass remains to be seen, but it has certainly given people something to argue about on the internet, which, let us be honest, was probably half the point.
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