GOP bill aims to disenfranchise new American immigrants based on politics and faith

A new bill proposed by U.S. Rep. Chip Roy (R., Texas) would, if it became law, downsize democracy in America. The bill would allow the government to deport, denaturalize, or strip citizenship from American immigrants on account of their “membership, affiliation or advocacy of socialist, communist, Chinese communist, Marxist or Islamic fundamentalist doctrines.”

According to the bill’s text, “advocacy” includes “writing, districting, circulating, printing, displaying, possessing, or publishing any written, electronic, or printed matter” in support of those ideologies. The bill thereby strikes at the three pillars of the United States’ claim to greatness — freedom of speech, religious tolerance, and openness to immigration — and constitutes contempt for the country the Republican Party claims to be defending.

It would be easy to dismiss Roy’s bill as a stunt or a joke. But if it becomes law, it would have an immense and chilling effect on Pennsylvania.

Roy calls this bill the Measures Against Marxism’s Dangerous Adherents and Noxious Islamists Act, a name that allows him and his allies to call it the “Mamdani Act” for short. Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), a legal organization with more than 100,000 adherents. The bill specifically mentions the DSA as an organization subject to the bill’s provisions for deportation and denaturalization. That Mamdani is also a Muslim links together the bill’s Red-baiting and Muslim-hating, speaking to overlapping groups of Americans’ fears of political and religious minorities.

Since Mamdani is a common target of conservative fulminations, it would be easy to dismiss Roy’s bill as a stunt or a joke. But if it becomes law, it would have an immense and chilling effect on Pennsylvania.

There are seven DSA chapters in the state, including the Philadelphia affiliate, which has over 2,000 members. In addition, approximately 150,000 Muslims live in Pennsylvania. Since the bill understands “Islamic fundamentalism” in terms that could implicate all Muslims, well over 10% of the state’s population would be subject to legal persecution on the basis of their religion.

The history of Pennsylvania is full of efforts to smear religious and partisan minorities as dangerous outsiders. Pennsylvania’s 1776 constitution targeted Quakers by forcing all state officials to swear loyalty oaths — a practice Quakers found sinful — and forced anyone who refused to bear arms to pay a fine in order to vote, a provision that would disproportionately impact Quakers. Generations later, Pennsylvanians suffered through the Second Red Scare.

In 1951, the state legislature passed a law forcing all state employees to swear loyalty oaths, a law clearly aimed at the Communist Party. Three years later, it outlawed the Communist Party altogether.

The architect of this latter piece of legislation was Michael Musmanno, a state Supreme Court judge who, although a Democrat, was one of U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s biggest admirers. The FBI also rounded up nine political dissidents from Philadelphia, whose subsequent trials made newspaper headlines. Subsequent court decisions neutralized these measures, but not before real damage was done. In particular, dozens of Philadelphia teachers lost their jobs.

Pennsylvanians with any awareness of American history, and the history of their own state, should understand how dangerous it is to establish loyalty tests based on people’s religious and partisan commitments.

Much as we now look back on McCarthyism with shame and regret, a law such as the one proposed by Rep. Roy would lead us to issue collective apologies in the decades to come — presuming, of course, democracy survives.

Nicholas Toloudis is a professor of political science at the College of New Jersey. He has recently written a book about the history of teacher unionization in Philadelphia.