Introduced as the The Stop Citizenship Abuse and Misrepresentation Ac (S. 3674) and out before the Senate by Eric Schmitt of Missouri in January 2026, this long overdue piece of legislation seeks to expand civil denaturalization for naturalized U.S. citizens (we dare not call them Americans) who, within 10 years of gaining citizenship, defraud government programs (such as welfare or other benefits programs exceeding $10,000), affiliate with designated foreign terrorist organizations, or commit aggravated felonies or espionage.
In both the SCAM act itself and in the minds of most patriotic Americans, acts such as these serve as very obvious prima facie evidence that a naturalized citizen lacked the required good moral character, attachment to the Constitution, and a positive disposition toward the United States at the time of naturalization. The SCAM act seems to ensure that the citizenship of these foreigners can be revoked retroactively and accompanied by an expedited removal process so they do not linger as so many immigrants have been allowed to do by the immigration “system” of the past 50 years.
From a nationalist perspective, one that prioritizes the preservation of the historic American nation, its cultural core, rule of law, and the right of a nation to determine who joins its community, this bill is a major step towards correcting the post-1965 multicultural experiment that is straining the United States. The SCAM act begins to address the consequences of decades of immigration policy that treated citizenship as an administrative benefit rather than as the sacred trust which patriotic Americans hold it to be.
By now, tens of millions of Americans understand that the The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (also known as the Hart-Celler act) marked a deliberate break with America’s prior system of national origins quotas, which had favored immigrants from Europe who shared linguistic, cultural, and religious history with those of the American nation. For generations, really since the founding, the United States was peopled by Western European Christians who shared a common, Western Civilization with the settlers and revolutionaries who created our wonderful country.
Prior to 1964, very few people believed America was a “nation of immigrants.” The phrase was only popularized by John F. Kennedy’s essay, “Nation of Immigrants,” posthumously published that year after being commissioned by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith (now known as the ADL).
JFK’s younger brother, Edward Kennedy, then the Chairman of the Senate subcommittee hearings on the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act promised in his opening remarks:
Under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same . . . Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset . . . Contrary to the charges in some quarters, S. 500 will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area, or the most populated and economically deprived nations of Africa and Asia . . . In the final analysis, the ethnic pattern of immigration under the proposed measure is not expected to change as sharply as critics seem to think. [Lawrence Auster, The Path to National Suicide: An Essay on Immigration and Multiculturalism, page 11 1990, Monterey, Virginia, The Immigration Control Foundation]
Nothing could be further from the truth. Before 1965, the foreign-born share of the U.S. population had fallen to a historic low of about 4.7% by 1970. Today it stands near or above 16%, matching or exceeding historic peaks from the 1890s. The sources of immigrants shifted dramatically from Europe to Latin America, Asia, and Africa. European Christians fell sharply from roughly 90% of the entire immigrant population in the mid-1960s/1970 to around 10% today.
This was not organic evolution but a deliberate policy choice. The 1965 Hart-Celler Act, the Immigration Act of 1990 (IMMACT), and consecutive administrations’ choices not to enforce our borders against illegal immigrants has resulted from chain migration via family reunification, expansive refugee programs, and lax enforcement that appeared to prioritize volume (namely cheap labor that undercuts American workers) over selecting for ability to assimilate as Americans had been promised. The result has been the largest sustained demographic transformation in American history. A transformation that has overwhelmingly occurred within living memory and resulted in 95-97 million residents with post-1965 immigrant roots living in the United States today.
The consequences are visible in persistent patterns of incomplete or segmented assimilation. Some groups achieve rapid upward mobility and cultural convergence (think Japanese, Korean, or Albanian communities) while most others form parallel societies with the high welfare dependency highlighted by the work of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and others.
Social trust erodes in high-diversity settings, as documented in research by Robert Putnam and others. Identity politics flourishes, reframing American history and institutions through grievance rather than gratitude and continuity.
Nowhere is this failure more starkly illustrated than in certain refugee and chain-migration communities from failed or clan-based societies. The large Somali population in Minnesota (now composed mainly of naturalized citizens or their U.S.-born children) has become a popular case study. While many individuals may be law-abiding, the community as a whole has shown disproportionate involvement in organized welfare fraud schemes, including the Feeding Our Future scandal. Federal prosecutors charged dozens (the vast majority of Somali descent) in schemes siphoning hundreds of millions from child nutrition and other programs during the pandemic era, with some reports citing even larger totals across related frauds in housing, Medicaid, and autism services.
These were not isolated acts by desperate individuals. They involved coordinated exploitation of programs funded by American taxpayers, often enabled by officials hesitant to scrutinize “minority-owned” or immigrant-run entities for fear of racism accusations. This is the predictable outcome of mass migration and the resulting multiculturalism—where there is no assimilation pressure, national identity becomes subservient to ethnic identity. Those of us who still identify as “American” will be exploited.
The SCAM Act directly targets this phenomenon. By establishing that serious post-naturalization misconduct (especially fraud against the very government that granted them citizenship) constitutes evidence of prior misrepresentation, it makes revocation more feasible and most importantly, makes it retroactive. It closes loopholes that allowed individuals to game naturalization requirements and enjoy the benefits of citizenship while they demonstrated through actions that they never truly embraced the American nation.
This is common sense. Citizenship is not an unconditional right for anyone who arrives and waits the statutory period. It is a privilege extended to those who demonstrate they will strengthen, not burden or subvert, the nation. The bill restores a measure of accountability that the sheer scale and changed character of post-1965 immigration made necessary. It sends a deterrent signal: America will no longer serve as a permanent safe haven for those who view its institutions transactionally.
The bill starts with a Congressional Findings and Purpose (Sections 2–3).
The bill emphasizes traditional naturalization requirements: an applicant “must demonstrate…
(A) a person of good moral character;
(B) attached to the principles of the Constitution…; and
(C) well disposed to the good order and happiness of the United States.”
It finds that some naturalized citizens have “viewed their new citizenship status as a purely administrative benefit” for personal gain, and that convictions for fraud, terrorist affiliation, or serious crimes demonstrate they lacked these qualities at the time of naturalization. It cites Supreme Court precedents affirming that citizenship obtained by fraud or without meeting requirements “is illegally procured” and revocable.
In section three the bill seems “to expand and clarify the grounds for the United States to pursue civil denaturalization proceedings against individuals who have proven, by defrauding a governmental program, affiliating with a foreign terrorist organization, or committing certain criminal offenses,”. In short, the bill states that those who would be denaturalized never met the conditions of gaining US citizenship in the first place.
Section four on Expanded Grounds and Procedures amends the INA in section 340 (§340) by allowing the Attorney General to initiate proceedings to denaturalized immigrants and adds new subsections to help in this pursuit;
- Terrorist affiliation (d)
- government fraud ≥$10,000 (e)
- aggravated felony/espionage (f) within 10 years
The legislation states that such acts
“shall be considered prima facie and sufficient evidence that the person
(1) lacked good moral character, constitutional attachment, and proper disposition at naturalization;
(2) obtained citizenship by “concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation”; and
(3) that the admission order “shall be revoked and set aside” with certificate cancellation.”
A fallback provision in the act (g) reduces the window to 5 years if the 10-year period is ruled unconstitutional.
Furthermore, the legislation clarified in no uncertain terms that revocation is retroactive and therefore “effective as of the original date… treated as void from the date on which it was issued”. The denaturalized immigrants become removable via expedited proceedings under INA §238, to quote: “regardless of (A) the person’s immigration status after denaturalization; and (B) the time that has elapsed since… naturalization.”
Critics, those who believe America is just a multicultural strip mall, have decried the act as harsh. Most patriotic Americans seem to see it as the minimum required to defend the unique privilege that is American citizenship, especially at a time when policy failures have already admitted millions whose assimilation has been incomplete or not occurred at all over multiple generations.
Still, the SCAM Act is narrow. It applies only to naturalized citizens for specific acts within a 10-year window (with a fallback to 5 years). It does not address birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants, the ongoing flood of asylum claims and illegal entries, chain migration itself, or the broader policy architecture of the 1965 Act and subsequent expansions. The SCAM act alone cannot retroactively undo the demographic and cultural shifts already underway, but no piece of legislation can.
The SCAM Act is but one necessary step in the project to institute remigration and reclaim the American nation for the American people.
The broader nationalist approach would include (alongside the SCAM Act):
- Retroactive denaturalization beyond the ten-year time span. We know for example that the 1986 IRCA, known as the Reagan Amnesty, had a fraud rate as high as 70% according to several studies while a 2008 refugee family reunification program run by the State Department had a potential fraud rate of 80%.
- Denaturalizing the children of immigrants who committed fraud along with their parents, a.k.a. family reunification at home. (This would require a constitutional amendment, but that is already in public discussion after the disappointing Birthright Citizenship SCOTUS ruling.)
- Broad visa cancellation to refocus on the American labor force
- And, ultimately, a voluntary remigration program such as the one we illustrate here, or has been adopted by Sweden here.
The SCAM Act is hopefully one of many steps this congress can take toward re-asserting the American nation, not as a geographic expression or an economic zone, but as a people with a purpose.