Before we are citizens of any nation, we are first citizens of the human race.

The first principle of democratic government: Respect the people.

That was basically the largest single extension of citizenship rights in the country.

Even as human rights norms have steadily evolved over the past half-century, the field of citizenship has remained one of the last bastions of untrammeled state sovereignty. As a result, citizenship creates a giant loophole in the international human rights framework.

A whole community starts on that road to fully realizing its own American citizenship or its rights as full-fledged Americans. In that sense they really are the catalysts for the (Latino) civil rights movement.

When you single out any particular group of people for secondary citizenship status, that's a violation of basic human rights.