Taking aim at ‘anchor babies’?

December 8, 2005

About a month ago, the Washington Times ran an item explaining that some House Republicans are “looking closely at ending birthright citizenship.” Legally, if you’re born in the United States, you’re a citizen. The Times said “a task force of party leaders and members active on immigration” were reviewing proposals to change that standard permanently.

I thought it was just a trial balloon. Apparently, they’re serious.

It’s been a cornerstone of American law since shortly after the Civil War: Children born in the United States become citizens, even if their parents are here illegally. Now some conservatives are taking aim at that birthright.

They call the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants “anchor babies” because at age 18 the children can apply to bring other family members here from abroad, and a growing group of House Republicans wants to change the policy. They hope to add a provision to the immigration bill that the House of Representatives will consider next week that would deny citizenship to those children.

“They see people are coming here simply for the purpose of having a child here and then, because they’re the anchor, they can have all the family come in on that child’s ticket … There are thousands upon thousands of people who are doing it,” said Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., a leading opponent of illegal immigration. He cited “surprising” momentum behind the plan. A House bill to make the policy change has 77 co-sponsors.

Silly me; I assumed House Republicans were no longer capable of surprising me. I stand corrected.

Look, this isn’t complicated. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution says that those “born…in the United States” are “citizens of the United States.” If there’s any wiggle room here, I don’t see it. For that matter, as Knight Ridder noted, the Supreme Court ruled in 1898 that a Chinese immigrant born in San Francisco was legally a U.S. citizen, even though federal law at the time denied citizenship to people from China. The court said birth in the United States constituted “a sufficient and complete right to citizenship.”

And yet, there are 77 members of Congress who think they can and should change this by adding a provision to an immigration bill?

It’s likely that these 77 know this stunt is unconstitutional and incapable of generating majority support in both chambers. They’re not making law; they’re making a point — a dumb, borderline-bigoted, politically-tone deaf point.

Wow. Just wow. So much for us being a nation of immigrants.

What a overzealous nut Tancredo is, I hope this BLOWS UP in his face.

  • CB,

    I agree with you that this is not something that can be changed without a constitutional amendment addition, but I have to say that if such an amendment addition (or subtraction really) were to be put up for vote to the states I would have to believe that it would pass.

    I think most people in this country, regardless of political persuasion, would have a problem with denying citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants. To most people this seems like a ‘loophole’ that should be closed.

  • I meant to say “would NOT have a problem”.

    Zoe, while we ARE a country of immigrants, most of them went through a legal process that made them citizens of this country. We should really be looking at the way we allow immigrants to legally enter this country and be debating those requirements.

  • What’s the bill number?

    I’m working on it. I’ll add it in comments when I find it … unless one of you find it first.

  • I love it when the loonies add to our voting base for us. Didn’t these fools ever take a look at what happened to the California ReThugs after Prop 187? They turned themselves into a permanent minority party that can only win a statewide office by creating a phony recall and then supporting a candidate who could never get through their “vetting process,” i.e., the Republican primary election.

    Despite Gridlock’s demonstration that the white male of the species Boobus.Americanus still exists, they’re a declining percentage of the total.

  • Tom,

    I appreciate the new name, I’m considering it…snark

    While I’m not in 100% agreement with the notion that only people born to citizens should become citizens, I still believe that most Americans would go along with it.

    That was my only point.

  • Unfortunately, I think it is complicated, You did not use the entire phrasing, which reads: “”All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens . . . .”

    As noted in a lette rto the editor in the WSJ 12/7 by Dr. John C. Eastman, Professor of Law, Chapman University School of Law:

    The Supreme Court first considered the clause in the Slaughter-House Cases of 1872, unanimously recognizing that the phrase “was intended to exclude from its operation children of . . . citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States.” This view was confirmed in the 1883 case of Elk v. Wilkens. The phrase, according to the court, meant “not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction, and owing them direct and immediate allegiance.” Children of temporary visitors to the United States, particularly those who are here illegally, owe primary allegiance to their parent’s country, not to the U.S., and are therefore not guaranteed citizenship by the terms of the 14th Amendment. In 1898, the Supreme Court raised the citizenship floor mandated by the Constitution slightly, to include children of legal, permanent residents who, by virtue of a treaty with the Chinese emperor, were never eligible for citizenship themselves. But to read the holding in Wong Kim Ark as determining that the Constitution also mandates automatic citizenship to children of temporary, illegal immigrants not only presses the Constitution’s text beyond the breaking point, but significantly intrudes on Congress’s plenary power over naturalization. More fundamentally, such a view permits illegal immigrants, by their unilateral and illegal action, to demand membership in a political community supposedly grounded on mutual consent. It permits people such as Yaser Esam Hamdi, who clearly owed his primary allegiance to a foreign power and who was captured in Afghanistan in armed conflict against the U.S., to lay claim to the protections of citizenship merely because he was born in Louisiana while his father was on a temporary work visa.”

    Not sure I prefer this interpretation personally, but it does seem logical.

  • There’s another version of this …. HR 3700

    http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c109:12:./temp/~c109gfJDbo::

    It contains the following provision:

    SEC. 201. LIMITATION ON AUTOMATIC BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP.

    Notwithstanding any other provision of law, with respect to an individual born after the date of the enactment of this Act, the individual shall not be a national or citizen at birth under section 301 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1401) unless at least one of the individual’s parents is, at the time of birth, a citizen or national of the United States or an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence.

    Sponsored by Tancredo, co-sponsored by Virgil Wolfe (R-VA 5)

  • If the repukes stay in power another ten years, Mexico and Canada will be the ones with immigration problems. Not us.

  • I’ve been reading lately that the GOP intends to make illegal immigration its next big wedge issue. I’m very concerned that they may be on to something.

    My personal belief is that a big reason for the overwhelming initial support of Bush’s Iraq adventure was that it was consistent with a snowballing sentiment that the US should become a security state. “Keeping out furriners” meshes quite nicely with that goal.
    . . . jim strain in san diego.

  • Having followed the Thomas link (found above) and read the draft of the bill, it seems that the intent of the bill is to exclude natural-born citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants. I think many Americans would agree that to be a citizen by birth that one parent would already be a citizen or that one (or both) parent(s) had legal residency in the United States. I think that most American would NOT find such qualifiers unreasonable. With all due political consideration, where would George W. Bush stand on enacting some restriction on “born in the USA” citizenship?

  • Can’t govern? Can’t provide oversight for JoJo the talking monkey? Can’t seem to stop visiting those ‘hospitality suites’ for a little R&R and a sack full of unmarked bills?

    No problem, get yourself wedge issue and learn to holler out your a$$…

    I think that we should push for all ‘public servants’ to be readily recognizable in the name of efficiency and national security. I’m thinking mandatory bright red jump suits and special caps with plastic dog turds on the brim (to signify ranks)… Would this solve anything? No, but if I have to pay tax money for imbeciles, they should have to dress accordingly.

    -jjf

  • Jim Strain is right. And it resonates with a long history of anti-immigration policies in this country.

    Our Founding Fathers and their offspring welcomed immigrants and encouraged them to settle/pacify the westward moving frontier. As immigrants lost their original identities – there really are few ethnic ways to homestead – America truly functioned as a melting pot.

    When the frontier closed (Frederick Jackson Turner), new immigrants (mostly from Southeastern Europe) settled in ethnic sub-communities in the nation’s newly growing industrial cities. This coincided with the emergence of the “Eugenics Movement” (based partly on newly available demographic data, partly on bad biology) and its concern with separating the “fit” from the “unfit” in the evolutionary “struggle for survival”. It also coincided with the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the south. A three-time Democratic presidential candidate could run on the slogan “Rum, Romanism and Rebellion” (Catholics were drunkard, violent hotheads who didn’t believe in democracy) and stores could post signs saying “Help Wanted / No Irish Need Apply”.

    Here’s a summary of the main developments of our nation’s efforts to “keep out furriners”:

    1875 – first exclusion law in US history: no criminals or prostitutes
    1882 – Chinese exclusion act (the major railroads had already been built)
    1885 – contract labor (can’t come here unless you can prove you already have a job – a sop to the emerging labor unions)
    1896 – first year immigrants are a majority in US
    1907 – largest single year immigration (1,285,349, 75.6% from S.E. Europe)
    1907 – Japanese excluded through ‘gentleman’s agreement” (TR agreed with the Japanese emperor; Japan wanted workers for its own industrialization while our unions feared them as scabs)
    1917 – all Asians excluded (except Filipinos, who were allowed come as servants in our Naval Officers’ mess)
    1917 – literacy test for admission
    1921 – 1st Quota System (3% by national origin, census of 1910 – if there were 1000 Croatians in that census, then 30 Croatians could enter the US)
    1924 – 2nd Quota System (2% by national origin, census of 1890 – after the Supreme Court said quotas were legal, they shrank the quotas and went back to a “whiter” census)
    1952 – McCarran-Walter Act (re-affirmed quotas, passed over Truman’s veto)
    1952-63 – Eisenhower and Kennedy continue to ask Congress to drop quotas
    1965 – Johnson signs law phasing out quotas by 1969

    Once again, today’s GOP Crime Family finds its footing by attacking something decent that the Democrats finally achieved well over a generation ago.

    Americans are ignorant of their history — here, just as with social security and abortion — but they resonate with the hate, fear and superstitions which preceded efforts to make a better society by overcoming them.

    I just read the other day (Leonard Pitts) that there is a new “white flight” in this country. It used to be from foreigners (push them westward). Then it was from newly enfranchised blacks (flee to the ‘burbs). Now its from Asians (their kids make my tv- and game-addicted kids look bad in public schools, so I take them out and put them a softer cocoon).

    If they were serious about solving “the immigrant problem” the GOP would enforce current laws on those who do the hiring, but they won’t. Instead, the GOP plays on fear and loathing. If it weren’t for that kind of irrationality, they wouldn’t have enough votes to elect people whose only purpose is to make the obscenely rich richer.

  • There’s nothing “borderline-bigoted” about Tom Tancredo and his Republican buddies. He’s a full-bore, racial purity type of racist. Tancredo tries to put a “nice face” on it, but it’s hard to draw an other conclusion when he espouses nuking Mecca.

    I see the Democratic Party passing up another excellent opportunity by remaining silent on this issue. The party needs to stake out a position that protects and encourages legal immigration and extends essential legal protections to illegal immigrants as well. It’s the decent and honorable thing to do, and, as if that’s not good enough, it would strengthen support from immigrant communities. Why concede the argument to a bunch of white supremacists?

  • Although a liberal green-card-holding “resident alien,” I’m sorry to say I find this provision reasonable. That said, current immigration policies are totally messed up right now and could use a large dose of sensible, compassionate, reworking. Some sort of temporary-worker provisions, for starters.

  • Darrell – As a proud MN Carpetista, consider me all over Peterson!

    I agree with Jim B and Jim Strain. But I’m also afraid that Gridlock is right; all those “love it or leave it” types who get all worked up over flag-burning will eat this up, too.

    (A friend’s aunt once suggested that anyone wanting to immigrate to America should have to convert to Christianity before being alowed into the country. I opened my mouth to argue with her but nothing would come out. I wanted to point out how ironic it would be should Iraq actually become a democracy while we devolved into an ideological theocracy, but I realized I could talk to her for 100 years and she’d never get it.)

    It’s true that an overhaul of immigration law is long overdue, but this bill isn’t going to do ANYTHING to solve any of the real problems. Which makes sense, since that isn’t its purpose. Ed Stephan knows what this is all about.

    Shannon

  • Although I am otherwise a liberal, somehow I don’t find HR3700’s requirements all that horrible. Thank you Andrew (post #11) for sharing with this list the history of SCOTUS’ changing interpretation the 14th Amendment. I thought it was more cut-and-dried than that. I have worked overseas, and most countries are much more restrictive about how they grant citizenship. Of course our immigration policies need more substantive reform than just this. .

    Hopefully this will occupy the Repugs’ attention, and they won’t push an amendment to allow naturalized citizens to run for President (can you say “President Schwarzenegger”?).

    –Beo

  • Must be that season again. Every few decades this country likes to close the door to the “outsiders”. Usually occurs a couple of years before we have an extreme labor shortage and the doors are flung wide open again.

    My prediction…the baby-boomers will to want retire and we will need workers to:
    1) take care of them
    2) make up for the sudden drop in percentage of working adults.

  • GOP officials, Rep. Tom Tancredo and John C. Eastman should reread the Citizenship Clause.

    The phrase “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” is enclosed within a PAIR OF COMMAS, with the first comma placed before the coordinating conjunction “and.”

    An element enclosed within a PAIR OF COMMAS is “non-restrictive,” meaning the phrase does not modify or qualify the element preceding; a comma-plus-coordinating-conjunction is regarded as a “single punctuation mark.”

    Another case of being “hanged by a pair of commas”?

    Grammatically, the phrase is actually intended to read: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and [all persons] subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and [citizens] of the State wherein they reside.”

    The Clause thus confers a SECOND, still unrecognized, category of citizens of the United States–“All persons subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

    Senator James Doolittle mentions this category during the debate (at p. 2897, 1st col., Congressional Globe, 39th Congress, 1st Session, May 30, 1866) with the phrase “all persons subject to the jurisdiction of the United States” in quotation marks:

    “But, sir, the Senator has drawn me off from the immediate question before the Senate. The immediate question is whether the language he [Senator Jacob Howard, the author] uses, ‘all persons subject to the jurisdiction of the United States,’ includes these Indians…”

    Based on the remarks by Judiciary Committee Chairman Senator Lyman Trumbull and Senator Howard (the author) during the debate, this SECOND category conveys the meaning:

    “All persons owing allegiance within the extent or territory over which the constitutional power of the United States extends”–or birth within the realm and within the allegiance.

    At that time in 1866, this SECOND CATEGORY embraced “persons” NOT “in the United States” but within:

    –the 12 ceded territories awaiting statehood
    –the 11 Confederate States awaiting readmission to the Union
    –the District of Columbia.

  • People who come here illegal should not have any rights. There children should not be citizens. All illegals should be deported. Companies that hire them should be fined and jailed. If illegal are denied job access and benifits maybe they will go home. The ones that dont should be deported. People whom make the US there home should also learn English. No signs in Spanish or prompts on the phone. There is a problem with legal and illegal immigration. The Democrats love illegals because they are the minority party. A large number of Republicans represent corporate America who like cheap labor. This distroys the Unions and better working conditions our ansestors fought hard to get. Its time to put Americans first. Not illegal immigrants. Granting citizenship to aprox 11 million illegals will create new voters for even wider open border polices. They should not be permited to stay. They are breaking the laws of our nation. We need a third party. One with common sense. Im sick of the far left, and the far right.

  • i am doing my term paper on illegal immigration. my topics are anchor babies, health care coast rising for citizens, and economic problems from illegal immigration.
    if you want post facts so i can check them out

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