I do have an issue with that approach. That rule of yours includes all the grown-ups. The ones who crossed over as adults. The ones who have a home to go back to. The ones who don’t live between cultures. From my very first post, I haven’t been talking about them. From the beginning, I’ve been talking about the children of immigrants, that particular subset of people who have no real connections to the land of their parents. I haven’t been talking about those who immigrated as adults.
I didn’t describe all illegals that way. I used the word “children”. Twice. Don’t take my word for it, go ahead and scroll back up, and take another gander at that post. Read the post this time, so that you will have finally read it once. Now pay attention: I was using the word “children” because I was specifically referring to the children.
There are comparatively few non-citizens who came to the US as children because of the unlawful actions of their parents. They exist, yes, but they are much more rare than those who were born in the US (citizens), and those who came as adults (not citizens). Most of those who make the trip illegally are, in fact, adults. People who have come to work. Now, I would without doubt change citizenship policies for adults, too, if I had my druthers. But I would certainly not make it so easy for adults as I would to do for the children brought across the border in their tender years, if I knew of a practical rule that I could apply.
Birthright citizenship is a practical rule. It is simplicity itself to apply, and it prevents a permanent underclass of non-citizens who have lived in the country their whole lives, whose parents have lived in the country their whole lives, whose grandparents have lived in the country their whole lives, etc. The US has no successive generations of undesirables, as Germany had, because the children born in America are Americans. It is unfortunate that the rule doesn’t cover the one-year-old that’s brought over the border by parents, but no rule is perfect.
The difference is that you are proposing to strip away citizenship rights from the American born child. The infant in Guatemala was never entitled to citizenship rights and presumably is still in Guatemala.
I don’t think anyone is proposing to strip away the rights of anyone who is already a citizen. What is being proposed is, at some point in the future, not granting them citizenship in the first place, if the parent is not in the country legally. A right never held can’t be stripped away.
How about a modification of the rule I suggested? Any child in this country is a citizen, regardless of circumstance, whether he was born here or not? How’s that? However rare, doesn’t that solve every permutation of your “think of the children” concern?
What social problems do you imagine this change would solve?
Is the social problem the flood of illegal immigrants? How would this change solve the problem? If we can’t find and deport the parents of these kids, how are we going to find and deport the kids?
If the problem is illegal immigration, we should attack the source of the problem. This proposal doesn’t do a thing to stop illegal immigrants. Children who are citizens already go back to Mexico with their parents if their parents are deported.
The illegal immigrants are already here, and we can’t seem to stop them, and this proposal just makes their illegal status hereditary. Do we really want a permanent hereditary underclass? Because it’s not like we’re going to be deporting these people, if we were deporting the illegals then they wouldn’t be here to give birth to US citizen babies in the first place. Since it turns out that in real life illegals don’t face a very high risk of deportation. Since in real life we aren’t deporting them, the kids are still going to be here, except now they won’t be citizens. And since these kids will be illegals, when they grow up any of their kids will be illegals too.
If we have an illegal immigration problem in this country we shoudl enact policies to solve the problem. However, this proposal does nothing to solve the problem, and instead creates worse ones.
No, let all the current citizens remain citizens. Just going forward–so there’s no rights being stripped away. They simply are never citizens, just like the blameless kid in Guatemala.
What worse ones? The hereditary underclass I was talking about.
As for the incentive to commit a crime, what’s the primary incentive to cross the border? To get work. You know it, I know it, the American people know it.
Until you figure out a way to address the real source of the problem, deporting kids born in this country is both useless and cruel.
Oh, yeah, the hereditary underclass. Forgot about those guys.
So, should we show the same consideration for children brought illegally into this country, however small the number? Would it be cruel not to confer citizenship on them?
But the problem of minor children being brought illegally into the country is pretty small. It’s a small problem, and besides, since these minor children are indisputably citizens of their home country and have roots in the home country, deporting them back to their home country is not a problem.
What’s the home country of a child that’s born in the United States? The United States. So where do you deport a kid who was born in the United States?
The by far larger problem is economic migration, adults coming to this country to look for work. That’s a big problem, no? They don’t come here hoping to have American citizen children, they come here for jobs. So how about we address the big problem?
And the fact is, we aren’t deporting the adult illegals, are we? If we started deporting the adult illegals, they wouldn’t be here to give birth to children in the United States, would they? The fact that we don’t deport the adults is why they have kids here in the first place. So if you’re worried about illegal immigration why not just deport the illegals, and then you don’t have to worry about the kids, because those kids will be born back in Mexico because their parents won’t be here.
Except we don’t deport the adults, and there’s no indication that we’re ever going to. So now what? I want an immigration law that benefits the United States. How is the United States benefited by deporting people who were born in the United States? And of course, since we don’t deport the adults, we aren’t going to deport the kids, they’ll stay here but be illegals rather than citizens. Secure the border and the birthright citizenship goes away. Don’t secure the border and making the kids born here noncitizens doesn’t solve anything, because they’ll be able to stay here indefinately anyway.
So what if it’s a small number? And being a citizen of another country doesn’t minimize the hellish existence while here in the foggy limbo of the hereditary under-class of non-citizen zombies.
The ones we’re discussing are likely citizens of another country as well–the country of which their parents are citizens.
Why do you suppose that this is an either-or decision? And why do you assume illegals aren’t deported?
Why do I assume that illegals aren’t deported? Because there are estimated to be 11 million of them here. If we were catching and deporting them there’d be a lot less. Of course we do deport illegals sometimes, but most of them go about their business every day. If they get arrested, or their workplace gets raided, then they’re deported, but there are ~11 million already here. Making their kids illegals too will just make the number of illegals larger, because it will transform people who would have been here legally to illegals.
Since there are over 11 million illegals already here that we can’t seem to deport, and this plan just adds to the number of people we’d want to deport, how is it going to help?
I can’t cite this, as it’s something I heard on the news a few weeks ago, but the Border Patrol estimates they catch about 2 out of 3 people who sneak across the border illegally. That doesn’t take into account the fact that many people are multi-time offenders, but it does give an idea of what the situation is. It also doesn’t count the folks who are here with expired visas.
From my own perspective, I’ve probably come on stronger in this thread than I really feel. This is very low on my priority of things we should do, and I’m not overwhelmingly in favor of it in the first place-- it’s more that I’m sympathetic towards the idea, and not ready to accept the negative side at face value (per the OP). I don’t think we’re being flooded with “anchor babies”, and I don’t know that denying them citizenship would change the situation wrt illegal immigration anyway.
California is going bankrupt because (a) it’s in a recession, (b) its Progressive referendum process allowed the state constitution to be modified such that it’s both very hard to raise taxes & mandatory that the budget be balanced every damn year, & (c) it has a GOP minority that don’t know John Maynard Keynes from my left nipple. California could save itself with the requisite mix of actual macroeconomic acumen & political courage, but the statehouse lacks sufficient quantity of those things. And your quote is inane:
Of course! If they were successful back home, they’d have less incentive to leave. But unlike (warning: gross over-generalization) the ancestors of Irish-Americans, Scotch-Americans, & English-Americans, who were the dregs of the British Isles, deported forcibly by the empire, the Mexicans coming today are ambitious go-getters, who will, given the chance rise in station & add greatly to this country, just as the Ashkenazim did.
Or is that what you’re afraid of?
I’m so unimpressed by this. I am an Anglo in Missouri. I can travel 1500 km in any direction & by surrounded by persons who speak substantially the same dialect. I am not so ignorant of history either to think that’s normal or to think I have a right to maintain it. In any case, the bilingualization of the USA would connect us to an even larger cultural group, the Americas. We could be the crossing point of Latinoamérica & the Anglosphere–how is that bad?
I have none. In fact, this thread has finally pushed me to realize that is exactly what the USA needs. National elections should be entirely residency-based, just as local elections are primarily residency-based. If a Puerto Rican can move to Fayetteville, Arkansas, immediately establish residency, vote, & run for office–and he can–then why not just make residency the sole criterion? Considering our constitutional practice of finding penumbrations in the Constitution & making of them absolute rights, we may as well–it’s more in the Constitution than the right to privacy, say.
Sure. And children born to Jewish mothers from here on can be considered citizens of Israel & therefore not the USA–after all, they have Right of Return, they can go elsewhere, & we’re not taking it away from any child born one second before the law goes into force, just those born from one second after. I can’t see any problems with that, can you?
you know of the people I have known who were illegal and had kids here, there is something in common with almost all of them. It was unplanned. the whole “life is what happens when you’re making plans” thing. That is just what they need another mouth to feed. when they are living paycheck to paycheck. Turns out they met someone had a little dinner some drinks. and oh shit you’re pregnant, you’re sure?
not that much difference from unplanned pregnancies here. you gotta realize most of the ones that do come (not overstay visas) are young. You have to be to make the crossing. Probably single. They get here and some fall in relationships like most people on the planet. I doubt their goal is let’s get you preggers so we can become legal.
Does it somehow not occur to you that children should stay with their parents? That it’s their parents’ responsibility to raise them? And that their parents’ culture is going to be the biggest influence in the early years of their lives?
Is a 5-year-old child of illegal immigrants who speak nothing but Spanish nevertheless as proficient in English as any other 5-year-old American?
A child’s home is the dwelling of his or her parents, wherever that happens to be.
