The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has altered its mission statement, removing the characterization of America as a “nation of immigrants” in order to emphasize the new goal of “securing the homeland”. Some critics made the point that most citizens are immigrants or their descendants, while others noted that most Americans believed that immigration should remain stable or increase. [...]
The young American republic preserved this European doctrine. The US supreme court formalized the Doctrine of Discovery in three famous cases of 1823, 1831 and 1832. Chief Justice John Marshall took for granted the obvious fact that America was the homeland of the Native Americans, “the rightful occupants of the soil”. By the logic of “discovery”, Native Americans had no rights because America was their homeland: “Their power to dispose of the soil at their own will to whomsoever they pleased was denied by the original fundamental principle that discovery gave exclusive title to those who made it.” [...]
However flawed it may be, the Doctrine of Discovery is the law of the land, affirmed regularly by our highest court. In the 21st century, in New York v Oneida Indian Nation of New York, the supreme court cited Marshall’s rulings and relied upon the Doctrine of Discovery as the basis of the federal government’s dominion over land once controlled by Native Americans – which is to say, the entirety of the United States of America.
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