{"id":6028,"date":"2005-12-08T11:11:21","date_gmt":"2005-12-08T16:11:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6028"},"modified":"2005-12-08T11:11:21","modified_gmt":"2005-12-08T16:11:21","slug":"taking-aim-at-anchor-babies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/taking-aim-at-anchor-babies\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking aim at ‘anchor babies’?"},"content":{"rendered":"

About a month ago, the Washington Times ran an item<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

I thought<\/a> it was just a trial balloon. Apparently, they’re serious<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Silly me; I assumed House Republicans were no longer capable of surprising me. I stand corrected.<\/p>\n

Look, this isn’t complicated. The 14th Amendment<\/a> 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.”<\/p>\n

And yet, there are 77<\/i> members of Congress who think they can and should change this by adding a provision to an immigration bill?<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6028\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}