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After the election, and even after the inauguration, we've been constantly serenaded by a massed chorus of leftist Americans shouting "Not my President!" to indicate their disapproval of Mr. Trump.
Obviously, this statement is false on its face: Mr. Trump is, in fact, President of the United States, and as American citizens, he is in fact "their" president whether they like it or not, just as Barack Obama was "our" President for a very long eight years. Nevertheless, as American citizens, they enjoy a First Amendment Constitutional right to say this regardless of its truth.
There is another class of person, though, for whom this statement is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth: Foreigners. Mr. Trump is indeed "not their president."
This is because Mr. Trump is President of the United States of America. He is not president of Mexico, or Syria, or of any of the other countries from which foreigners come legally or otherwise. He may perhaps be Leader of the Free World, but he's certainly not President of that either, for which we're grateful.
While this might come as happy news to Canadians and Europeans, there were a number of such who were seriously annoyed the other week. Several foreigners, attempting to enter the United States to protest Trump's inauguration, were summarily turned away at the border to much dudgeon from the left and from the press.
But... isn't this a denial of their Constitutional right to freedom of speech?
It most certainly is not, and for one very simple reason: they have no Constitutional rights, First Amendment or otherwise.
We've pointed out as eloquently as we can that the term "civil rights" is drawn from the Latin civitas, which refers to citizens exclusively. By definition, the civil rights which are listed in the American Constitution are available only to citizens of the United States of America. Because we're nice people, we generally extend them as privileges to our guests from foreign lands, but that's out of our kindliness, not by natural right.
The difference between citizens and non-citizens has been clear for thousands of years, going back to Bible times. After the Roman soldiers rescued the Apostle Paul from a lynch mob as reported in the Book of Acts, the government's Standard Operating Procedure required that, torture having been shown to be an effective means of finding facts, they torture him to find out who he was and what he'd done.
There was bad news for the inquisitor though: Paul claimed his right not to be tortured and to have a proper trial by virtue of being a natural-born Roman citizen, which most residents of the Empire weren't. Acts 22:26-29 shows how Paul's having been born into Roman citizenship saved him from a severe scourging and probably much else. Indeed, his would-be torturer was impressed and outclassed by Paul's pedigree:
And the chief captain answered, With a great sum obtained I this freedom. [He was a naturalized Roman citizen, who'd paid heavily for the privilege as legal immigrants to the U.S. are supposed to do today.] And Paul said, But I was free born.
This vivid distinction is reflected in our border laws, most of which were written long enough ago that their authors actually had some clue about what citizenship is and to whom the Constitution applies. Consider the U.S. code that regulates whom the Border Patrol is supposed to not let in:
(3) Security and related grounds.-
(A) In general.- Any alien who … seeks to enter the United States to engage solely, principally, or incidentally in-
(iii) any activity a purpose of which is the opposition to, or the control or overthrow of, the Government of the United States by force, violence, or other unlawful means. [emphasis added]
If you are going to attend the inauguration of the President for the purpose of protesting, it's fair to say that you are in opposition to the Government of the United States. And sure enough, as the media widely reported, there was no shortage of serious unlawful means exercised in the course of the protesting, so the Border Patrol made the right call.
We should all take the time to read through this law: it's not only fascinating, it's a stellar illustration of how border security is supposed to work. What's more, this law governed how it did work for all of American history, until the one-world politically-correct diversicrats took over in the second half of the 20th century.
This same law goes on to require the rejection of people holding specific un-American philosophies:
(i) In general. - Any immigrant who is or has been a member of or affiliated with the Communist or any other totalitarian party (or subdivision or affiliate thereof), domestic or foreign, is inadmissible.
So - no Nazis, no Soviets, and if we had any common sense, no supporter of Sharia law. Mr. Trump is quite within his legal rights to ban extremist Muslim immigration, and this isn't even his strongest legal support, no matter what the media bloviators say.
Is the First Amendment therefore meaningless? Not at all: Nazism, Communism, and, yes, even Islam, are perfectly legal in the United States... for American citizens. As American citizens, they have the right to express their opinions no matter how odious. But there's no Constitutional requirement for us to accept any more foreign barbarians that aren't already part of our natural-born problem, and every legal reason to keep them out.
It never ceases to amaze us how looney leftists complain that the Border Patrol violates illegals' "civil rights" in summarily dumping them back across the border without any due process. Illegals, not being US citizens, have human rights, but not civil rights. They have a right not to be summarily shot - though even shooting them is legal if they're armed or threatening - but they have no right to a lawyer, a trial, a court, or anything at all beyond a swift escort in the right direction.
But if they wish to, they may find some small satisfaction in the observation that Mr. Trump is not their President, no matter how fervently they might wish they could claim him at that moment.