Oh silly, of course they didn't mean it that way!

The BBQ Pit
181

It does make sense in that it’s not a punishment. I know that your big heart wants them to have a nice life, and I respect that, but not letting someone become a citizen with the SOLE argument of “But my parents broke a big law to get me this status” is not taking anything away. It’s simply doing what has to be done to get the actions we want. I didn’t say, “Put the kid in jail” or “Fine him horribly”.

One of the sad truths is that we can’t avoid lumping kids in with their parents. Every day parents do things that are bad for kids, but in all practical terms I can’t protect all kids from bad or stupid parents. I once had to tell a tutoring student she could only come back to our SAT classes after her dad paid the full amount. He was weeks late, refused to honor his signed agreement, and insisted he didn’t have to talk to me about it. She had come to our company for a long time, and cried, but I couldn’t protect her from the bad actions of her dad. I just don’t have the authority to remove his oversight and control from her life.

I think the fundamental disconnect in these arguments is that one side doesn’t really believe there is a problem in illegal immigration. If there’s no problem, then we can just let things slide all the time. It also means that we can start to view not just giving everyone citizenship as “punishment”. It all reminds me of the abortion debate: if you think the fetus is truly human, it’s murder, and if you don’t, then it’s a “potential” of some kind that can be disposed of if wanted. The two sides can’t ever agree, because the real arguement is on a deep philosophical/spiritual level, and all the arguments can’t change the starting premeses of the two sides.

Ok, a serious question. If these kids are deserving of citizenship, whose only arguement is that they’re already here because their parents broke the law to be here and deliberately worked the system to subvert the very spirit and point of the law, then who is NOT deserving of citizenship? I’m really asking. These are people who were told “Stay out”, then came in already and essentially shouted “Possession is 9/10ths!”.

182

Okay, they are already here and, yes, sometimes they need medical care, and they never have any money, so, yes, morally, we taxpayers have to foot the bill. But, there is a limit. If they keep flooding across the border the point will be reached where we will have to make some very, very hard choices. And, those choices will probably be to give care to American citizens and people who are here legally first. In fact, with the expenses of this war, I think we are probably at that point and that is what is causing the problem. The well of money is no longer bottomless. And people who have always received free care and pass the word to every other illegal immingrant coming over the border are upset about it. Most of them probably don’t have the critical thinking capacity to look at the situation as it really is. Just like the rest of us they want what they think they are entitled to and forget the consequences.

183

My point is that the kids ARE being used as HUGE reward to the paretns. There’s even a phrase for it now: “anchor baby”. Leaving the citizenship of the kids exactly as it would have been is neither rewarding nor punishing the kids, and it is pointedly not rewarding the parents.

184

So what do you do with the children who then are citizens of NO country?

185

It’s totally fucking the kids over. You have to remember, the kids may have little connection at all to their parent’s native land. Their grasp of the language will be imperfect. They won’t have any idea of how an adult functions or supports themselves in that culture. And, worst of all, they will grow up thier whole fucking lives KNOWING that they don’t have a place here, they can’t ever be a real sucess here.

I’ve already spoken in this thread about how our first generation kids at my school are great. We also have a really sad group of teen immigrants. They didn’t come here by choice, and now that they are here they know they have no future here. They will never be able to get a real job, they will never get to go to college–they are almost impossible to motivate in the classroom because they don’t see the point: an education is irrelevant if the only work you can ever do is under-the-counter grunt work.

We are not getting rid of illegal imagration. As a nation, we’ve never sucessfully blocked immigration. We don’t want generations of apathetic, hopeless kids. We want generations of kids who are motivated and goal-oriented. We want kids that are invested in the system. Because they are going to be with us much longer than their parents.

186

I don’t know exactly. But that’s not a good argument to say that all kids who are born here of illegal immigrant parents should be citizens.

I also am starting to suspect that another of the fundamental disconnects between the two sides is “America should solve everyone’s problems or at least be really cool to everyone and do what they want” vs “I know that there are problems, but not all of them are mine, and my hands are full now”.

187

I think it’s more that some people think that once someone is born here, that are one of ours, and hence our problem. There has to be some way to decide what “one of us” is, and place of birth and parentage have been those factors for a very long time. And any attempt to revise that basic criteria needs a pretty big reason.

Also, some of it is simple pragmatism, as I explained in my last post.

188

Manda JO
I know what you’re talking about. I do think though that we’re having this fundamental disconnect that I mentioned. The simple fact is that I don’t think that the fact that it’s hard for them is reason enough to perpetuate the system that you seem to be admitting is horribly broken.

I know that we’re not stopping illegal immigration. We seem to be agreeing on this point: something serious needs to be done. Physically stopping people in some manner is one idea. Another that would slow the flow is not putting out the brass ring for child-bearing age people to grab at. It’s extremely common knowledge that if you can just manage to deliver a baby here, you’re essentially golden. This kind of reward keeps people coming.

I’ve taught in extremely Hispanic neighborhoods, and I know the situations you’re talking about. I don’t like it either. I don’t have a perfect solution, but I don’t see that not having a magic bullet is an argument to provide this kind of incentive for an action we all don’t seem to want.

I think you have a good point there. That is one of the disconnects between the sides.

It ties in with my point about, “if you don’t think there’s much of a problem, then there’s not much to fix.” But if you’re hearing about your hospitals threatening to go out of business because of so many unpaid bills, and you know of people who have been hit by uninsured illegal immigrants who broke the law to even be on this side of the border, it all starts to add up. I do think there’s a big problem. To be fair and answer your point, I don’t think they’re ours. I know that’s been the criterion so far, but I suspect that when that was written, it just wasn’t visualized that there would be millions of people who would have the incentive, means, and attitude to immigrate illegally. I do think it’s a big enough problem to change the rules (especially as they never made much sense to me in the first place).

This all reminds me of the meeting that Jon and Ken on KFI-640 AM Los Angeles broadcast this year with national government officials. They pointed out the hypocricy of saying, “The rounding up of illegal immigrants in Temecula broke no laws, and no one is being disciplined for them”, and then turning around and building a straw man of “Now, when you say ‘round them up and deport them’, we’re not going to have some fascist-looking squad grabbing people off the streets for questioning”.

So the officials admitted that the activist attitude in finding illegals and deporting them was a legal form of enforcing the law on the books, but then acted like the only way to enforce the law was to be some sort of psuedo-Nazi. The crowd at the meeting actively booed them, which seemed to really surprise them. I guess they’re used to getting away with it with other crowds that are just more liberal, or from areas that aren’t sick of the problem, I don’t know.

189

But it’s not “the system,” as in a set of bureaucratic regulations that can be changed by administrative fiat, or even statute law. It’s the Constitution that grants jus soli citizenship to every person born here and subject to the laws (i.e., not the child of a diplomat). To say, “that was fine up until now, but we’ve got Mexicans coming across the border and have to change it,” is an insult to every American of every ethnic heritage who’s been the child of immigrant parents and made himself a part of this country.

We don’t get to decide which of our fellow native-born Americans are citizens.

Meanwhile, we have a problem in that Mexican nationals are crossing the border without complying with what we do have for entry regulations, because they can find work here, albeit often at far substandard wages, and they apparently can’t find equivalently good work at home.

There are a number of ways to fix this. One might be insisting that Mexico fix its economy and providing them aid to do it. They have the population and resources to be a first-world country; all they need is to make them work right, and perhaps an infusion of capital to enable it. One might be imprisoning all the businessmen that knowingly employ illegal aliens … and often use that leverage to abuse them. One might be setting an immigration quota that loosely resembles what the supply and demand for Mexican labor actually is. A practical solution that takes economic and social realities into account, and acts to regularize them rather than behaving like racists.

Or we could go back to the 1830s, when “No Irish need apply.”

190

Polycarp

I understand that it’s in the constitution. I didn’t advocate changing it by fiat, so I don’t know why you said that. I can advocate changing the constitution. We’ve essentially done it 27 times.

(Not being snarky) I don’t know why you say that. We can decide anything we want. I said I was just fine with changing the constitution, so that would seem to take care of that. It seems to me that this is an argument of “But we’ve always done it that way.” But my entire point is that the old way may not be working.

I’m also not sure why you brought up the point that illegal aliens can get jobs here. How does that relate to the idea of their kids being citizens?

Then we come to your practical suggestions, all of which are good points. However, I really resent the implication that I’m racist for this view. You take that back. And I don’t appreciate the line about “No Irish need apply.” My real name is Swaney, so I don’t think I’m in that crowd, either.

191

Cardinal, do you think there should be any cut-off point at all for expelling the native-born children of illegal immigrants? If a couple come here illegally, have a kid, and succesfully duck the law for, say, seventeen years before they get caught, you think that kid should be thrown out of the only country he has ever known? You’re basically destroying his entire life if you do, because of something his parents did before he was even born. I understand the impulse behind what you’re saying, but your solution strikes me as pretty heartless. You also haven’t addressed what we should do with children who are not recognized as citizens of their parent’s country. This is a major issue that needs to be tackled if you’re going to try to change this ammendment. It’s not something that you can just sweep under the rug.

I also don’t think it’s at all accurate to say that the people who wrote the fourteenth didn’t know the possible consequences of rampant illegal immigration. After all, that’s pretty much how we ended up with Texas, and they joined the Union a good fifteen years before this ammendment was adopted.

192

(Notice that I’m actually reading people’s posts and responding to their points, and not calling them names to discredit them)

Miller

There are a couple problems with what you said. I didn’t say that we grab every kid who is living here now who was born to illegal immigrants and throw them out. But we have to decide which discussion we’re having. Are we talking about whether the rule really makes sense for the future, or just the best method to implement it? I got the feeling before that it was beyond questioning for many on the other side. Are you saying that it’s not for you? My real point is that if we can decide that it doesn’t make sense for the future, then we can cross a mental line and work on how best to do it.

I also don’t really know exactly why I’m being accused of being heartless, unless once again people have read things I didn’t write. I didn’t write that we should be deporting current citizens. I said the practice doesn’t make a lot of real practical sense, and that I would stop it.

If we decide that the policy/amendment is not working, we can change it. Let’s not have any more of that “but it’s in the Constitution!” bit. So was slavery (essentially) and male-only-voting, and kids being drafted who never had a chance to vote for their representation. We changed it. So if we can agree to change it, then it would seem to me that at the worst, you really step up enforcement, and make a cut-off date for the end of it. Of course you’ll have a rush to beat the deadline, but after that, it’s changed. We shouldn’t keep on doing something because changing is a hassle or because it wouldn’t affect everyone everywhere for all time.

I’m not sure what your point is about Texas. It would seem to support my point. Illegal immigration (I’m sure there was a lot of it from America) helped very significantly to overthrow the established government. Even if the writers of the 14th Amendment thought that was just fine, in a selfish sort of way, it would seem to be a cautionary tale against allowing illegal immigration to an extent that it impacts the nature of the beast.

Now, let me make it clear, especially after I’ve been essentially called a racist, that I don’t mean “They’ll come here and talk different!” I was stupified by this quote about the kid who was suspended in Kanssas City for speaking Spanish in the halls:

=====================
‘English First’ Spokesman Says Student’s Suspension Was Justified

Boulet feels the school was in a no-win situation, where if it does not stop someone from doing something bad it gets sued and if it tries to stop someone from doing something bad, it gets sued. Now, he says, as a result “we have a situation here where the [Rubio] family is all ready to file a lawsuit because the father is a new American citizen, and evidently he learned in citizenship class that whenever you’re unhappy with someone, file a lawsuit.”

I can’t imagine where this guy is coming from. I teach HS about 10 freeway minutes from the Mexican border, and if we suspended kids for speaking Spanish, we’d lose about 80% of the school. How is this preventing something bad? That really does sound racist to me.

193

So it doesn’t look like I’m avoiding issues:

I don’t know. I’m open to suggestions. But I also want to make the point that it’s not America’s responsibility to cure everything for everyone. I have different attitudes for the national policy than I do for my personal life. I want to help the kid personally, and as a matter of Christian charity, I might try to help him do (something). As a national policy, I don’t think we can make it known that all you have to do is break the law and then you’re permanent. How is this different from “Well, since you DID manage to break the lock on the door of my rental house, you’re entitled to stay here forever” ?

194

  1. I don’t say “It was fine up until now”. You make it sound like I was ok with it until I saw those dirty Mexicans coming. You have no basis for that, and I certainly didn’t say it. My entire point is that I don’t think it makes sense from the beginning.

  2. It’s not an insult to every immigrant. I have NO idea what you could be talking about. I’m thinking it’s another subtle way of calling me a racist. Is it? I’m ALL for people coming to this country and making themselves part of it. Once I was talking to a German friend, and he was saying that the Turks there just didn’t fit in, because they werent’ part of German culture. I said, “Sorry, I’m too American to relate to that. I’m for the inclusiveness and melting pot idea. People come, they adapt, and they end up giving different flavors, like all the different types of restaurants you can find here.” I’m actually confused how changing the law on illegal immigration is insulting to legal immigrants. Shoot, the talk radio shows out here get Mexican-American people calling in about the current policy. “My dad waited and came in legally, and he became a citizen, and these people just come and grab. Why did he even bother? It’s insulting.”

  3. Sorry, Opal

195

Cardinal: Sorry if it looked like a slam, or like I was calling you in particular racist. It’s a problem, and needs to be addressed. But IMO not by trashing the longstanding ideals of America. I spun off your post to give some thoughts of my own; sorry if it looked like I was savaging your POV. :slight_smile:

196

Wow, a standup guy. Amazing. Thanks.

197

It’s not so much that it’s hard for them as it is hard for us when there are hundreds of thousands more totally hopeless, futureless people livning in this country. Each wave of immigration has been soaked up because the children of immigrants are citizens. They are vested in the U.S. This is how we soaked up the Irish, the Germans, the Chinese, and the Eastern Europeans. Most racial tension in the U.S. comes from the one migrant group that wasn’t given a stake in the system for far too long–African Americans.

And I don’t think there is any way to actually stop the flow of immigrants, nor that making citizenship more elusive will have any actual effect. People live here as illegals for decades. Becoming legal is sought after, but not a necessity.

And again, I don’t think it’s that much on an incentive. The ones that are on the road to citizenship are anyway, and the ones who are not, don’t care.

Does anyone have any actual evidence about how well this whole “anchor baby” thing works? Is it really a free ticket to permanent residency? If it is, maybe that is what ought to be adjusted, instead of interfereing with the rights of a person who did nothing to jepordize those rights.

Well, then, that’s where the debate need to be then, and that’s a really big fucking change. Which is why it needs to be a constitutional amendment (as you concur), and not a legislative change.

Actually, Thomas Jefferson recognized the importance of people feeling invested in their country when he wrote in a letter to John Adams:

To Jefferson, at least, the reason our Revolution didn’t end up like the French Revolution was that our citizens had a stake in their society.

People already come over here knowing it’s damned hard to become a citizen. Making that even harder won’t affect anything, but it won’t stop people from having babies. So we have even more people with no investment, no hope, and, even worse, no alternative to go “home”.

198

So you’re buying the whole “slavery” angle? Why?

199

“Give me your poor, your weak, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

Let’s just take that off of the Statue of Liberty.

K?

200

I was under the impression that I had clearly used a figure of speech, with an open invitation to improve on it, to describe what Rushgeekgirl’s husband is reported by her to have encountered. Do you have an alternative way of expressing it?

Oh, and by the way, what would be your preferred term to describe agribusiness operatives paying a fraction of minimum wage and no benefits and using the status of their employees to get away with doing it without repercussions?