Republicans Push To Revise 14th Amendment

theprestige said:
As someone currently reading a history of the Civil War, I'm curious to know what you think the party of Lincoln was actually like.
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Noble abolitionists sallying forth to do battle against mustache twirling plantation slavers?
 
RhodyDave said:
The Republican party has become synonymous with bigotry, xenophobia, and ignorance in the last couple of decades. It has become the refuge of the fearful, the hateful, and the intolerant. Unfortunately, the Republican party is now to me a poisonous subset of the US population, one that I am embarrassed by, frightened of, and suspicious of.
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Geez, why on Earth would you think that?

I have been a life-long Democrat
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...oh.

Mystery solved.
 
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Furthermore, say what you will about the substance of the proposed amendment to the Constitution, but at least the Republicans are going about it the proper way: by proposing an amendment. If it were people with a squishier view of the Constitution, they'd do what people like that have been doing for more than eighty years -- take it to court and try to persuade the justices that the fourteenth amendment is outdated and doesn't mean what it says.
 
Grizzly Adams said:
Furthermore, say what you will about the substance of the proposed amendment to the Constitution, but at least the Republicans are going about it the proper way: by proposing an amendment. If it were people with a squishier view of the Constitution, they'd do what people like that have been doing for more than eighty years -- take it to court and try to persuade the justices that the fourteenth amendment is outdated and doesn't mean what it says.
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Heh. That's exactly what some Republicans have been doing.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127093634

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/26/AR2010032603077.html
 
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Thunder said:
I honestly don't believe that the children of illegal aliens should receive automatic citizenship in the USA.

But if they do, then they should not be able to be used as bridges to legalize their illegal parents. Other legal immigrants, yes...but not the illegal parents who bore them.
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From what I understand, the process to legalize the status of a parent who entered or stayed in the US illegally is very difficult.

The basic process that can happen with a minor child citizen of an illegal immigrant is Cancellation of Removal. I cannot find on a government site a backup to this claim (please correct me if the number I keep finding is false) but this process is limited to 4000 immigrants per year facing deportion. Legal or illegal immigrants. Keep in mind this process is also limited to the parents of children who would be exceptionally burdened by the loss of the specific parent. The biggest reason appears to be physical abuse and battery, but I imagine chronic or terminal sickness would qualify.

The more likely process for a child's illegal immigrant parent to gain immigration status requires the child to be 21 and sponsor the parent. A huge factor in this is if the parent can be shown to have resided illegally in the US for more than a year then there is a 10 year penalty before the application process can be finalized. So this is more than likely a 31 year investment for most illegal immigrants and is unlikely to pan out. Most such requests are denied.

As for the purpose of the 14th Ammendment, I do not understand why it is controversial that one of the purposes is to avoid having a permanent generational underclass in the US that are possibly citizens of no country. That just appears to be a human rights disaster waiting to happen. The reason why this is possible may be vastly removed from what the originators of the ammendment imagined, but the result that it prevents happening in the modern situation is still the same result they sought to prevent in their own situation. A law that prevents undesirable results regardless of the situation that is the cause is a well crafted law in my opinion.
 
shecky said:
The idea that the US would suddenly have millions of newcomers sitting around with nothing to do is a popular perception, but has no rational basis.

The easiest way to deal with this is to liberalize immigration so that potential residents can come, and leave, without any significant trouble. This makes the border more secure, because there is no incentive to cross anywhere but an official crossing point.
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You make an implicit, invalid assumption. There is a surfeit of labor here and in most countries that illegal immigrants come from. Thus, there is bound to be lots of people on welfare. If the welfare in the USA is better than that in a foreign country, there would, indeed, be an incentive to get into the USA.

In my view, liberalizing immigration is a way to make a serious problem worse.
 
MattusMaximus said:
I'm curious as to why this question is only coming up now, after multiple waves of immigration (the Irish, the Chinese, etc) over the last 140 years. It can't have anything to do with the Tea Party and the upcoming elections, could it? :rolleyes:
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You think this is the first time this has been discussed or proposed. I remember my dad and his brother arguing about it 45 years ago. There have been other bills proposed and as I mentioned this is nothing compared to the Chineses exclusion acts. I could see you reacting this way if this was for an Hispanic Exclusion Act.
 
What would be the purpose of revising this ammendment? It's my opinion that it's driven by parionia and/or racism.
 
Unemployment figures are much higher in the US, Canada and European nations than they are in the countries with the most emmigrants.
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True for the US. Our primary sources of immigrants are from countries with lower unemployment. For Canada this is actually false even though the top country for immigration, China, has significantly less unemployment rates. India (barely behind China), the Philippines, the US and Pakistan are the next highest sources of immigrants to Canada and have comparable but higher rates. Most European immigration is from other European nations. As for nonEuropeans immigrating to Europe, the primary source countries tend to have higher unemployment rates. Places tend to be impovershed nations, nations suffering from war, or in the situation of North Africa and Turkey nations with economic ties but less secure local economic possibilities.
 
Random said:
Despite all the anti-immigration bleating about "anchor babies", it's not really a problem.

If an illegal immigrant has a child in the US, this only gets them two ways to stay.

They can apply for a "Cancellation of Removal", where they show that being deproted will have a serious negative impact on their US citizen child. The catch here is that there is a cap of 4,000 immigrants per year who can gain this status. Of course it is not that big a catch since we haven't actually reached that cap in years.

The second way is that after the child is 21, they can apply for a visa for their parents, as long as they can prove certain income requirements and the parent is in compliance with various immigration laws (in other words, not living in the US illegally in the first place).

This 14th amendment garbage is a solution in search of a problem.
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You're right. Let's assume 4,000 people get to stay in the U.S. due to having a child born in the U.S. How does that number compare to those that enter illegally through the borders, those who enter legally but overstay their visas and those get to stay through sham marriages?
 
thaiboxerken said:
What would be the purpose of revising this ammendment? It's my opinion that it's driven by parionia and/or racism.
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A lot of people believe that civilization is a zero sum game. They feel that if a child of illegal immigrants is allowed to be a citizen, it will somehow adversely affect their own children.
 
Alt+F4 said:
You're right. Let's assume 4,000 people get to stay in the U.S. due to having a child born in the U.S. How does that number compare to those that enter illegally through the borders, those who enter legally but overstay their visas and those get to stay through sham marriages?
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The US immigration service procress for catching scam marriages is actually pretty good. I would be comfortable in suggesting is pretty close to zero
 
Kestrel said:
A lot of people believe that civilization is a zero sum game. They feel that if a child of illegal immigrants is allowed to be a citizen, it will somehow adversely affect their own children.
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No, not really. But it was a nice try.

A lot of people believe that civilization was developed and survives on its laws and the enforcement of those laws. They feel that if a child of illegal immigrants is allowed to be a citizen, it is a reward for breaking those laws.

Once again, the law outlines the proper procedure for entry into the country, and for procedures for becoming a citizen of you so choose. All countries have these laws, not just the mean old US.

Here's what I believe. If you enter the country legally through a port of entry, with all of the paperwork and whatever it takes, and are a known entity in the US, subject to whatever regulations there are, and you have a kid, the 14th amendment applies. If you sneak across the border, breaking US law as your first act in the country, hide your presence from the US government and have a kid, that kid is not a citizen.
 
Region Rat said:
Once again, the law outlines the proper procedure for entry into the country, and for procedures for becoming a citizen of you so choose. All countries have these laws, not just the mean old US.
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The primary method of course being born in a place that the US has jurisdiction over. So how are the children of illegal immigrants being "rewarded" for breaking the law? The children followed the law exactly, just like I did! The parents are the ones who broke the law. Illegal immigrants do not receive better treatment than legal immigrants or natural born citizens, so I am not seeing the reward here in the law. I do not see the benefit of punishing children for the crimes their parents commit as well as the parents.
 
Region Rat said:
Here's what I believe. If you enter the country legally through a port of entry, with all of the paperwork and whatever it takes, and are a known entity in the US, subject to whatever regulations there are, and you have a kid, the 14th amendment applies. If you sneak across the border, breaking US law as your first act in the country, hide your presence from the US government and have a kid, that kid is not a citizen.
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Your beliefs don't override the actual words in the Constitution and the 14th Amendment.
 
The Fallen Serpent said:
The primary method of course being born in a place that the US has jurisdiction over. So how are the children of illegal immigrants being "rewarded" for breaking the law? The children followed the law exactly, just like I did! The parents are the ones who broke the law. Illegal immigrants do not receive better treatment than legal immigrants or natural born citizens, so I am not seeing the reward here in the law. I do not see the benefit of punishing children for the crimes their parents commit as well as the parents.
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How is a baby following the law? By being pushed out of a vagina? How is the kid being punished? By going back to the country where his parents are citizens? How can that be a punishment? Now, you may say that the parents country is a rat hole, and that to force the kid to grow up there instead of the (now) great US would be a punishment. I call BS on that, and would say that if it is indeed the case that we need to take in all children from the rat hole country due to the pure humanity of it all, then we should go in and take over said country and clean it up. Otherwise I say that it is their problem to deal with.

Now I don't want to put words in your mouth, so why don't you tell me what the punishment is for the kid if he has to go back to his home country, which I would bet he is a citizen of by virtue of his birth to his parents. The kid is not a stateless person, he would be with his parents, and grow up in the country that his parents did. I fail to see the issue.

Lastly, how would you punish the parents and not the child, since you agree that the parents broke the law?
 
Brainster said:
It's a little bit of theater intended to make the anti-immigrant chorus put up or shut up. No big deal as it will never pass.
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Which is even one more reason why, in the long term, this is a really stupid strategy by the GOP. Do they think the Hispanic citizenry in this country is just going to forget all of this crap in 2012 and beyond?

I'm telling you, the Republicans are shooting themselves in the foot.
 
Kestrel said:
Your beliefs don't override the actual words in the Constitution and the 14th Amendment.
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I understand that. But I thought the debate in the thread was to discuss the proposed changes to the 14th amendment to the Constitution. Forgive me for thinking that the thread would go farther than "see what those evil dumbass republicans are doing to are sacred Constitution".

That Constitution that had to be amended a couple of dozen + times already, by the way.

But only now, it seems that because those evil dumbass republicans are floating the idea, it is trying to bust the Constitution.
 
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