Posted on 06/23/2002 4:45:33 PM PDT by Registered
For an immigration time-out: http://projectusa.org/
Anchor babies: more immigration folly
Issue 120-16v: June 19, 2002
+== TIME-OUT PROJECT ==+
The Los Angeles Times reported a few weeks ago on a large and growing
industry in Asia catering to "birth tourists" -- pregnant women who
time trips to the United States to coincide with their due dates.
The motivation for these mothers-to-be is simple: thanks to a gross
misinterpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, the U.S. grants automatic
citizenship to any child born on U.S. soil.
These children are known as "anchor babies." That is, they may legally
"anchor" themselves and their extended families in the United States.
There are an estimated 200,000 such babies delivered in the United
States every year (including those born to illegal aliens).
Foreign women stand to gain much from having an anchor baby in the
family, but the benefit to the United States is unclear.
The anchor baby phenomenon effectively removes control of immigration
from the American people and is a significant component in a population
explosion that now has the United States growing at a faster rate than
China. Furthermore, anchor babies contribute to the dangerous trend
toward dual citizenship -- the holding of both U.S. and foreign
passports.
The Fourteenth Amendment, on which "birthright citizenship" is based,
was originally enacted to ensure the voting rights of newly freed slaves
after the Civil War. It was not intended to, say, make the child of the
French ambassador an American if it happens to be born in Washington
while the ambassador is serving.
The salient part of the amendment reads:
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to
the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the
State wherein they reside."
Neither a pregnant Mexican woman illegally in the United States, nor a
pregnant Korean tourist, is "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United
States. They are subject to the jurisdiction of the countries of their
citizenship. As such, their newborns are not subject to the American
people, and they are not American citizens.
Korean moms want 'born in USA' babies (Seattle Times)
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/text/134461964_koreabirths26.html
The Great Attractor (John Derbyshire in National Review)
http://www.nationalreview.com/derbyshire/derbyshire052802.asp
Anchor Babies and Interpreting the 14th Amendment (FAIR)
http://www.fairus.org/html/04139708.htm
Forum on dual citizenship: Freedom means choice (Dan Stein in Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette)
http://www.post-gazette.com/forum/comm/20020616edstein16p1.asp
The 14th amendment does not directly extend voting rights to adult black men, because that would have been binding on the Northern states. Instead Section 2 is designed to coerce only the Southern states into granting the vote to black men by threatening them with a reduction in their representation in the House of Representatives if they didn't comply. Because the percentage of the population in the North which was black was very low, Northern states could restrict the vote to white men and not suffer any reduction in the number of seats they were entitled to.
The decision was based on the court's analysis of English Common Law as it relates to whom a sojourner owes loyalty and obedience. Since the parents were assumed to have been in the United States with the approval of the Sovereign (the United States, itself), then they are assumed to owe loyalty and obedience. Therefore, they are "Subject to the Jurisdiction of". And their son becomes a citizen.
No such description could match an alien in the country illegally. To whom would such an individual owe loyalty and obedience? His native country, clearly, because we have never been allowed to inquire of or vet him, or to constrain him from entering if we determine him an enemy alien.
Here's what Congressman Brian Bilbray had to say:
Our current practice of granting automatic citizenship to anyone born in the United States, including the children of illegal immigrants, is just that -- a practice. The custom has no legal basis. In fact, I believe it is an unintended result of an interpretation of a Supreme Court case involving legal immigrants. To date, the Supreme Court has never ruled on the citizenship of children of illegal immigrants. Accordingly, I think it's time to clarify and resolve this issue once and for all.
Brian is correct. The decision in Wong Kim Ark -- which decided the case of a child of legal entrants -- has been misapplied. No where has a case been tried to adjudicate whether WKA should apply to illegals. Believe me, La Raza, Peter Schey, Gray Davis and Vicente Fox ALL do not want that to happen. It would screw up their plans, since the Supreme Court would slam the door shut.
Read the FAIR article and it's links. Read the WKA decision (it's on line; if you really are honest enough to question your own presuppositions, you can find it). Nowhere has anyone ever said what you said, at least as a court finding. It's just the wishful thinking of those who view invasion of the United States as legitimate.
Here's a little hypothetical for you. Say we have two Al-Qaeda operatives living in Dallas, in the country illegally (I'm sure they're there!). They have a kid, of course paid for by the U.S. taxpayer at Parkland Hospital, home of all illegal aliens. Tell me -- will you and the U.S. government try to convince me that baby terrorist is one of us, due all the rights and privileges of an American?
Just remember, Wong Kim Ark assumes that the parents "owe loyalty and obedience" to the sovereign. The sovereign in the United States is the people and their Constitution. Still think it should apply to these un-nice folks? And if not them, then what makes them different from anyone else in the country illegally?
"Disrespect for the rule of law: By not closing this loophole, the federal government in effect rewards law-breakers and punishes those who have chosen to follow the rules and immigrate legally. Allowing illegal aliens to give birth to American citizens, in effect, makes citizenship a license for welfare. [Peter Brimelow. National Review, April 7, 1997.]"
Peter Brimelow brings up a good point. On top of the travesty that loopholes in laws like the 14th amendment become magnets for illegal immigration, the very fact that we allow illegal aliens to abuse our laws and goodwill teaches them all the wrong things about America. Though I must say, what's happening here most certainly inures to the benefit of democrats who have never meet a welfare constituency that they couldn't buy off for votes. Hello Jorge, any body home?
Ashamedly, it is "OUR" government.
The return of the body snatchers, anyone?
I feel the same way. Pro-immigrant people speak of it as if it's a part of the Constitution, to try and justify today's out of control immigration problem. But it most definitely, of course, is not.
Sadly, America has become the welfare office and flop-house to the world.
LOL
How blithefully we forget those tens of thousands of brave Chinese people who in peaceful defiance of their autocratic state met in the spring of 1989 to celebrate the concept of freedom, raised a statue to the goddess of democracy (an homage to our own "Liberty Enlightening the World") and were rewarded with tanks, and guns and death. /SNIP/ in the middle of Tianenman Square where thousands had only the day before been killed, arrested or dispersed, here stood one man, standing alone before a line of tanks, refusing to let them pass. Whichever way the lead tank zigged, he zagged.
In your opinion, would these people fall into the category of "wretched refuse", or "huddled masses"?
America is the only remaining country which recognizes the concept of individual rights. Even though Lady Liberty's torch is now just a flicker, freedom-loving people from around the world still want to come here.
How about a trade? We could start by trading socialists in America for freedom-loving foreigners. The country as a whole would be better off.
I would go for that 100% as long as we keep the immigration l-e-g-a-l. There's only one problem, most of the "refuse" that comes remains refuse by becoming socialists with their lips sewn to the Dem party's ass.
I'd really like to agree with your post but logic, reality and the ability to see things as they are keeps me from doing so.
The inscription on the bottom of Liberty is comprised of just the last five lines from Lazarus’ poem ‘The New Colossus.’ The line before ‘Give me your tired, your poor....’ reads: ‘Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp! cries she with silent lips.’
At the time the poem was written (early 1880’s), Lazarus was expressing the belief that America was not interested in becoming yet another aristocracy – that the liberty which was guaranteed within her borders served as a beacon for those who were mercilessly chained to lower-class existences in other cultures.
Those were indeed the ‘good old days’. The time in America before leftists took the helm and succeeded in turning (as is always their style) good and noble ideas inside out.
What should have been (and probably was, in the late nineteenth century) implicit in those words was the idea that that ‘wretched refuse’....those ‘huddled masses’....would simply be afforded equality of opportunity. In America 2002, what is offered is equality of benefit, without equivalent input -- i.e., a free lunch on the backs of (dare I say?) real Americans. (Get out the p.c. paintbrush and paint me intolerant! :)
There are many obscene results of this open door citizenship policy – one of the most obvious of which is that, in California (where there is a high concentration of such convenient births) forty-eight percent of all Medi-Cal funded births are for alien mothers – not to mention the billions spent in welfare in order to house and feed their children. So, not only are the taxpayers of this country being bled dry in order to educate, house and feed the children of illegal aliens, but the taxpayers of the various states in which the alien birth rate is highest are being forced to pay for the births themselves.
Both Great Britain and Australia repealed their U.S. style citizenship by birth policy in the 1980s after enduring such abuses long enough.
The Fourteenth Amendment stipulates that Congress has the power to enforce its provisions via legislation. And the power to enforce a law goes hand-in-hand with the authority to interpret that law. So....an act of Congress stating that the umbrella of the Fourteenth Amendment does not include the offspring of illegal aliens would fall within Congress's prerogative. But, as usual, any such bill that has ever been brought before Congress (and there have been several in the last four or five years) has either died in committee or on the floor.
A misery loves company aside: We aren’t alone in our stupidity. I received a letter from a British friend of mine just today (we have been ‘penpals’ since the age of ten). Here’s a depressing excerpt:
A friend was having a BBQ party for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. I haven’t seen so many flags being flown since the Silver Jubilee. It’s frowned upon to fly the flag over here, because it tends to upset the ethnic minorities. At one stage, people were being fired or told to take them down until there was an uproar in the papers. It’s really a sad thing when you are not allowed to feel proud of your country and your flag.
It would appear that cow towing to ‘ethnic minorities’ is part of the peculiar genetic makeup of once proud and rational Anglo-Saxon cultures (gone awry).
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