Citizenship: The Next Reality TV Prize

Hey chummer,

DHS is seriously considering a reality television show where immigrants compete for U.S. citizenship. This isn't dystopian fiction—it's America 2025.

The proposed show, "The American," would feature 12 immigrants arriving at Ellis Island before traveling across the country by train to compete in challenges testing their "Americanness." The winner gets sworn in as a citizen on the Capitol steps. The losers? A Starbucks gift card and gasoline—consolation prizes for failing to prove their human worth.

This pitch is being vetted by DHS under Secretary Kristi Noem while Trump's deportation machine targets millions. The message: your humanity is conditional, your rights awarded only if you perform "Americanness" better than your competitors.

What was once science fiction has become our reality. From Arnold Schwarzenegger in "The Running Man" to Japanese teens fighting to the death in "Battle Royale", dystopian entertainment has arrived as policy.

"This Isn't 'The Hunger Games' for Immigrants"

That's the actual quote from Rob Worsoff, who pitched this spectacle to DHS. "This isn't 'The Hunger Games' for immigrants," he insisted to the Wall Street Journal. When you have to clarify your show isn't "The Hunger Games," you've already lost the moral argument.

"The show is in the beginning stages of the vetting process," a DHS spokeswoman confirmed. Each episode would feature a "heritage challenge," an "elimination challenge," and a "town hall meeting"—a format mimicking "Survivor" except the prize isn't money but basic human rights.

We're witnessing the logical culmination of both our immigration policy and our entertainment culture. Black Mirror's "Fifteen Million Merits" and Netflix's "Squid Game" were supposed to be cautionary tales, not policy blueprints.

Citizenship as Performance

The premise reveals the logical conclusion of our approach to immigration: citizenship isn't a human right but a performance to be judged, with worth quantified through "patriotism scores" and "American values alignment."

This has deep roots in American policy, from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to Ellis Island literacy tests to Trump's Muslim ban. What's new is the merger of dehumanization with mass entertainment—suffering repackaged as prime-time spectacle.

According to leaked details, the show would rank contestants on metrics like "patriotism," "economic contribution potential," and "assimilation rate." Human beings reduced to data points, scored on how well they perform the role of the idealized immigrant—just like contestants in "Death Race 2000" were scored for both their racing and their kills.

The Quantification of Human Worth

The truly dystopian aspect is the scoring system. Contestants would be evaluated through a comprehensive digital system that quantifies "citizenship worthiness," tracking performance while measuring "English proficiency," "civic participation," and "cultural compatibility."

Advanced algorithms would calculate each contestant's predicted value as a citizen, with economic contributions and compliance with authority weighted most heavily—echoing the dystopian world of Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Ben Richards", forced to fight for his freedom on television while the masses watch.

It's a perfect dystopian mash-up: government surveillance, corporate entertainment, and immigration control—a system explicitly ranking human beings based on their perceived value to the state while packaging their struggle as entertainment. Like teens fighting to the death on an island, but with citizenship as the prize.

Deportation as Entertainment

The most disturbing aspect is the "elimination ceremonies"—highly dramatized events where contestants would be removed from the competition under harsh spotlights for maximum emotional impact.

These ceremonies would blend reality TV eliminations with immigration enforcement—exit pathways labeled "ELIMINATED" evoking deportation processing, complete with DHS personnel standing at attention. Elimination captured from multiple camera angles to maximize emotional impact, just like the "Fifteen Million Merits" episode of Black Mirror where rejection means total humiliation.

The rejected immigrants' humiliation serves dual purposes: ratings-driving content and cautionary spectacle reinforcing the message that immigration is only for those who can prove their worth through extraordinary performance. In "The Condemned", death row inmates fight to the death on an island for entertainment; here, immigrants fight for the right to exist legally in the United States.

Dystopian Fiction Becomes Policy

The concept of citizenship as something "earned" through extraordinary merit has disturbing precedents in fiction. In Robert Heinlein's "Starship Troopers", citizenship is granted only to military veterans. "Service guarantees citizenship" was the slogan.

This show updates the premise: "Performance guarantees citizenship." Prove your worth through manufactured challenges, demonstrate your value, and maybe—if you outperform your fellow humans—you'll be granted rights that should be fundamental.

The parallels to "The Hunger Games" are unmistakable. While immigrants wouldn't be fighting to the death like in Japanese cult classic "Battle Royale", they would be competing for something nearly as essential—legal recognition and the right to remain with their families.

When Richard Dawson's game show host character in "The Running Man" said "Who loves you and who do you love?" before sending contestants to likely death, it was meant as satire. Now it's policy consideration.

The Corporate-State Alliance

This show represents the perfect union of corporate entertainment and state immigration control. DHS provides the authority and prize (citizenship), while production companies profit from the spectacle. Corporate sponsors associate their brands with patriotism while funding the transformation of immigration into entertainment.

It's the logical extension of our current reality, where corporations already profit from immigration enforcement through private detention facilities and surveillance technology.

Behind this grotesque spectacle lies real human cost. Imagine having your worth evaluated through contrived challenges, your deepest hopes for safety transformed into entertainment. Your family's future dependent not just on your performance in artificial challenges, but on how entertaining your struggle appears to viewers. Your tears captured for maximum dramatic effect.

For immigrants facing unprecedented enforcement, this show adds a new degradation—citizenship reduced to a game show prize, just as life became a literal game in "Squid Game".

What Kind of Society Have We Become?

When we turn human rights into reality TV prizes, we normalize the idea that some humans are more deserving of dignity than others. This is our cyberpunk dystopia: the commodification of human experience, suffering transformed into entertainment, human worth reduced to metrics and narrative.

As this proposal moves through the "vetting process", we face a fundamental question: What kind of society have we become?

Have we become so desensitized to dehumanization that we contemplate packaging immigrant suffering as prime-time entertainment? So comfortable with quantifying human experience that we see nothing wrong with scoring human beings on their "Americanness"?

The fact that this proposal wasn't immediately rejected speaks volumes about 2025 America. A government agency responsible for immigration is seriously considering a reality show with patriotic challenges and elimination ceremonies—turning dystopian fiction into government policy.

As William Gibson wrote, "The future is already here—it's just not evenly distributed." For immigrants, the dystopian future has arrived with dramatic lighting and elimination ceremonies, just like Arnold Schwarzenegger foresaw in 1987.

And now it might be coming to your television screen, packaged as entertainment.

Walk safe,

-T