Birthright Citizenship

[Thunder]

The fact is taking away birthright citzenship will do NOTHING to stop illegal imigration.

prove it.

 

[Thunder]

I think most people (myself included) are a little xenophobic, but .... well yours just seems a little over the top.

My grandparents were immigrants.

half of my office are immigrants.

I have nothing against immigrants. I welcome them.

as long as they come here legally.

 

[Random]

prove it.

Well, we have shown that illegal immigrants who have children while living in the US are deported and removed on a regular basis. There are also caps on how many people can apply to remain in the US if they are an illegal immigrant with a child who has been born in the US, caps that we regularly do not meet. There has been no evidence presented to show that significant numbers of illegal immigrants are coming to the US to have children here in order to gain citizenship for their child or themselves. They are coming here to work, not make babies.

I think at this point the burden should be on you to show how these birthright citizenship laws would have some effect on illegal immigration.

 

[TragicMonkey]

My grandparents were immigrants.

half of my office are immigrants.

I have nothing against immigrants. I welcome them.

as long as they come here legally.

Who has the power to decide which immigration is legal? When did your ancestors come here--during the period when various European countries had seized lands not belonging to them? Or the period when some of the population of these stolen lands stole them from the original thieves? I have to question the legality of a thief stealing from a thief then declaring who was and who wasn't legitimately entitled to come there. In fact, I have to wonder why you don't return to the lands of your ancestors, since you feel strongly about people coming uninvited to where they aren't welcome.

 

[Alferd_Packer]

Who has the power to decide which immigration is legal?

I particularly like this concluding paragraph from the SCOTUS opinion

Afroyim v. Rusk

Because the legislative history of the Fourteenth Amendment, and of the expatriation proposals which preceded and followed it, like most other legislative history, contains many statements from which conflicting inferences can be drawn, our holding might be unwarranted if it rested entirely or principally upon that legislative history. But it does not. Our holding, we think, is the only one that can stand in view of the language and the purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment, and our construction of that Amendment, we believe, comports more nearly than Perez with the principles of liberty and equal justice to all that the entire Fourteenth Amendment was adopted to guarantee. Citizenship is no light trifle [p268] to be jeopardized any moment Congress decides to do so under the name of one of its general or implied grants of power. In some instances, loss of citizenship can mean that a man is left without the protection of citizenship in any country in the world -- as a man without a country. Citizenship in this Nation is a part of a cooperative affair. Its citizenry is the country, and the country is its citizenry. The very nature of our free government makes it completely incongruous to have a rule of law under which a group of citizens temporarily in office can deprive another group of citizens of their citizenship. We hold that the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to, and does, protect every citizen of this Nation against a congressional forcible destruction of his citizenship, whatever his creed, color, or race. Our holding does no more than to give to this citizen that which is his own, a constitutional right to remain a citizen in a free country unless he voluntarily relinquishes that citizenship.

Emphasis added.

 

[Thunder]

Who has the power to decide which immigration is legal?

The United States of America.

Our government is recognized as being sovereign and legitimate by every nation on Earth, and the United Nations.

We have the legal right and authority to set immigration policy and restrictions.

You think my ancestors came to the USA right away?

No. They had to wait in line. So should everyone else.

 

[TragicMonkey]

The United States of America.

A set of rebellious possessions of the British crown, which stole that land from the people living on it.

Our government is recognized as being sovereign and legitimate by every nation on Earth, and the United Nations.

I believe the same can be said of Libya, pre-invasion Iraq, and the Holy See. That a group of thieves convenes and declares one of their number legitimate doesn't make it so.

We have the legal right and authority to set immigration policy and restrictions.

Because you say you do? Anyone can make claims like that. Taiwan says the same thing about its authority over mainland China.

You think my ancestors came to the USA right away?

No. They had to wait in line. So should everyone else.

I don't care when your ancestors came. That they came at all is the problem--if they weren't Native Americans then they were thieves and/or the receivers of stolen goods, and so are you.

 

[Dr. Keith]

Well, we have shown that illegal immigrants who have children while living in the US are deported and removed on a regular basis. There are also caps on how many people can apply to remain in the US if they are an illegal immigrant with a child who has been born in the US, caps that we regularly do not meet. There has been no evidence presented to show that significant numbers of illegal immigrants are coming to the US to have children here in order to gain citizenship for their child or themselves. They are coming here to work, not make babies.

I think at this point the burden should be on you to show how these birthright citizenship laws would have some effect on illegal immigration.

I'm anxiously awaiting a response to this well written post.

 

[Grizzly Adams]

Here and here. Its about 10,000 parents a year deported. Specific numbers are hard to figure out as ICE doesn't keep track of whether or not the people they are deporting have kids. Of course, its not true that we will deport the whole family. Sometimes we deport the parents and put the kid into foster care.

The "anchor baby" phenomenon that this birthright legislation is supposed to solve just doesn't exist.

I'm skeptical. The second link goes to a whine-fest that studied deportations of lawful permanent residents, not illegal aliens. For an LPR to be deported they have to have done something wrong -- committing certain types of crimes and not actually living in the US are the two usual reasons someone would have their green card revoked. Furthermore, the study's claims are BS in at least one respect: LPR's always have the opportunity to challenge their loss of status before an immigration judge. The study claims otherwise and that makes me question their competence.

As for the first link, I also question what's really going on because they have made the very mistake I explicitly suggested you avoid: confusing deportation with removal. They use the terms synonymously so it's not possible to determine what actually happened. Nor do they detail how many encounters they actually have each year with illegal alien parents of US citizen children, so an annual number of 10,000 deportations, even if they're all removed, doesn't mean much.

 

[daredelvis]

no, this is just a big strawman.

This is an ironic statement from one who throws around the "anchor baby" canard with no supporting evidence. Epically in light of the evidence brought to debunk it by several other posters in this thread.

What truly motivates your diastase for immigrants that are not of the social economic class that allows legal immigration? If they could get here legally, they would.

Daredelvis

 

[AlBell]

I don't care when your ancestors came. That they came at all is the problem--if they weren't Native Americans then they were thieves and/or the receivers of stolen goods, and so are you.

So we should allow illegal immigrants streaming across the southern border to take it from us?

And help them by pretending we are responsible for their health & welfare while they're doing it?

Some judges have noted the constitution is not a suicide pact.

 

[Thunder]

I don't care when your ancestors came. That they came at all is the problem--if they weren't Native Americans then they were thieves and/or the receivers of stolen goods, and so are you.

and what Native American tribe do you belong to?

oh, and btw, North America was not "stolen" from the Native Americans.

it was conquered. just like how all the European tribes conquered the lands that eventually came to be known as independent states, such as Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, etc etc.

 

[Thunder]

Because you say you do? Anyone can make claims like that.

our sovereignity and right to pass laws and regulate this land, is recognized by every nation on Earth.

deal with it.

 

[Grizzly Adams]

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/01/local/la-me-deport1-2010apr01

I didn't read this one specifically, but given the 88,000 figure and the "legal immigrant" label, I assume it's the same study with the same deficiencies I cited above.

The report*

Okay, this one actually has some numbers, and that's nice. But it doesn't do much for your argument. First of all, fewer than half of the removals were listed as being based on simply being in the US illegally, and more than 3/4 of the aliens had criminal records. The report also states that a given charge for removal isn't necessarily the most severe charge available, and an alien could be listed as having been removed for simply being in the US illegally when he was actually a felon because it was the easiest charge to tack on to get him out.

So the original question is still lacking an answer. How often does removal happen compared to how many parents of US citizens are encountered? (And at this point I think it should be made clear that the removals should be for the simple act of being in the US illegally, because no one's suggesting that criminals should be allowed to stay, right?)

*One interesting tidbit from the report, ICE stores information in a database written in COBOL! Holy 19th century, batman.

Dude, you have no idea. The number of programs the federal government uses that are text-based terminal programs is really disgusting.

 

[Grizzly Adams]

Well, we have shown that illegal immigrants who have children while living in the US are deported and removed on a regular basis.

Uh, nope you haven't. You've shown some numbers without context, and even those numbers are sketchy because of the factors I cited.

 

[Grizzly Adams]

I don't care when your ancestors came. That they came at all is the problem--if they weren't Native Americans then they were thieves and/or the receivers of stolen goods, and so are you.

Strangely, I suspect if all us thieving Americans went back to Tanzania and settled in the only place we came from that we didn't "steal" from someone else, we'd still be accused of stealing it from the people who live there today.

Where can I live, under your silly idea, where I'm not a thief?

 

[cwalner]

And at this point I think it should be made clear that the removals should be for the simple act of being in the US illegally, because no one's suggesting that criminals should be allowed to stay, right

I see it more as a comparitive cost analysis. How much do illegal aliens actually cost the US by using social services such as education, emergency rooms, etc versus how much will it cost us to increase enforcement to find and remove people who, other than being here without proper documentation, have violated no laws.

The fact is, once we have apprehended somebody for another crime, the additional costs of removal are comparable to incarceration, possibly even less. Therefore, if the arrested criminal is not here legally, it makes financial sense to remove them. However, increased enforcement of immigration to remove otherwise law-abiding illegals might end up costing us more than allowing them to stay.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Is it even possible for a State to legislate who can, and who cannot become a US citizen?

No. This law would be unconstitutional.

 

[Dr. Keith]

So the original question is still lacking an answer. How often does removal happen compared to how many parents of US citizens are encountered?

No, the original question was: Should we amend the 14th Amendment to prevent Anchor Babies?

Which led to the obvious question: how many "anchor babies" are there?

So far, there has been no evidence provided that they exist. They appear to be a fiction of the conservative narrative. So, we have people trying to amend the Constitution to solve a problem that they made up. What about the real problems? Like the monsters under my daughter's bed, what will the GOP do about that!

The fact that the government does not deport/remove every illegal immigrant it comes into contact with is a red herring in this debate. I know you didn't start the conversation down that path, but it is tangentially related at best.

 

[Random]

Uh, nope you haven't. You've shown some numbers without context, and even those numbers are sketchy because of the factors I cited.

Okay, do you have any numbers that we can take a look at? If you have any numbers that show that illegal immigrants are using "anchor babies" to stay in the country I really would like to see them.