Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Anchor Babies













In response to my last post, commenter "l" writes:
The birth-right citizenship was created for the slaves already in the US after the civil war. The way it is being used now is not the original intent and is basically a way to reap the benefits from a neighboring country by strolling over a river, and I'd feel the same way about Canadians streaming over and having kiddos.

Most naturalized immigrants HATE the anchor baby situation here. Completely unfair to them.
I think this raises/demonstrates several interesting points:

1. This is a perfect case of the "Oh, that's not what they really meant" argument that people pull out when the Constitution happens to disagree with their policy preferences. Other examples include "Oh, the Founders didn't really want to separate church and state," and "Oh, the Founders really meant that only militias should have the right to bear arms." Obviously, liberals and conservatives both do this from time to time, but the fact that conservatives have to whip out this type of argument so much more often these days is evidence that, as today's politics are reckoned, the Constitution has a liberal bias.

2. Does "l" really think the authors of the 14th Amendment were too stupid to imagine that universal birthright citizenship would be mostly applied to the children of immigrants? The argument kind of strains credibility. And has it occurred to "l" that birthright citizenship has been in place for about 150 years? You'd think that if the amendment were being used in a way not intended by the authors, someone would have gone "oops!" and made a push to amend it sometime during that century-and-a-half. But they didn't.

3. I assume that when the commenter says "naturalized immigrants," he means "green card holders," since naturalized immigrants are citizens and parents of "anchor babies" are not. So, where does he get his evidence that "Most naturalized immigrants HATE the anchor baby situation here"?? I searched and couldn't find a poll. So maybe the commenter means that "green card holders, by rights, should resent the unfairness of anchor babies." Is that true, though? Do anchor babies reduce the number of green cards we hand out?

4. Anchor babies are mostly a myth. Wikipedia says:
The term "anchor baby" is a misnomer to the extent that it implies that by having a baby in the US, temporary or illegal immigrants can "anchor" themselves in the US. In fact, a US citizen child cannot file for a US visa for its parents until the child is 21 years of age, and upon reaching that age the child must also be earning at least 125% of the US poverty threshold to be able to apply. Thus, temporary or illegal immigrants who have babies in the US have no means of remaining legally in the US; they must return home and wait until the child reaches age 21. Illegal immigrants usually cannot immigrate even after the child turns 21 since they usually face a multi-year or lifetime ban from immigration to the USA regardless of sponsorship.

5. People who oppose birthright citizenship may not have stopped to consider what our society would look like without it. Can you imagine a whole class of people, living in America, raised speaking only English, with no ties to any foreign country, yet who are not American citizens because their grandparents were illegal immigrants? I can imagine such a class of people, because I have seen them in Japan, a country that does not have birthright citizenship; they are called "Zainichi Koreans," and let me tell you, they are not particularly patriotic toward a country that treats them as second-class citizens because of who their parents were. Does commenter "l" really want to create that kind of underclass here in America?

So, to sum up: I haven't seen any convincing case for why birthright citizenship is a bad idea. It seems very clear that to eliminate it would be asking for trouble in a big big way.

12 comments:

  1. Yes! And also everything I said.
    ;-)

    I do think that mostly (with exceptions, I'm sure), people are upset about "anchor babies" not because they resent the babies, but because they resent the parents (the anchored, if you will). The consequences for the "anchors" themselves would just be the collateral damage of a policy meant to discourage the illegal entry. Some serious damage, if you ask me.

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  2. Does anyone really understand the process through which "anchor" babies really provide an anchor for achieving citizenship? Or is it just policy not to kick illegal immigrants who have "anchor" babies out of the country? For all the sturm und drang over this issue, I've yet to see anyone explain to me the mechanics of this problem.

    Also, Noah, since I have to say this every time you write about the subject: this post violates 'T'.

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  3. From Wikipedia:

    "The term "anchor baby" is a misnomer to the extent that it implies that by having a baby in the US, temporary or illegal immigrants can "anchor" themselves in the US. In fact, a US citizen child cannot file for a US visa for its parents until the child is 21 years of age, and upon reaching that age the child must also be earning at least 125% of the US poverty threshold to be able to apply. [6] Thus, temporary or illegal immigrants who have babies in the US have no means of remaining legally in the US; they must return home and wait until the child reaches age 21. Illegal immigrants usually cannot immigrate even after the child turns 21 since they usually face a multi-year or lifetime ban from immigration to the USA regardless of sponsorship[7]."

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  4. Yep. That's what I said.

    Sorry, it's just very exciting to actually know this stuff. :-)

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  5. Geez, I think I touched a nerve with that post. Y'all have WAY too much time to argue.

    1&2- This is a case of debating intent. According to Ry in the email chain this ammendment mostly effected slaves, native americans, and chinese railroad workers. Slaves and native americans were already here with at the founding, and the railroad workers were hopefully at least documented ....so who's to say that the intent of that ammendment wasn't toward LEGAL persons in the US?

    3. By naturalized i meant those immigrants who paid thousands of dollars and spent over a decade trying to become citizens (like my old british boss) who immediately got into the social security system. I can see a problem with en masse low earners drawing from SS w/o paying in. This also applies to healthcare and insurance drain of the illegal parents.

    4. Sure, I think the deportation rate is really low anyway compared to the amount of non-documented immigrants here. It doesn't matter and amnesty should just be approved already.

    5. Agreed.

    I don't really care about birthright citizenship as long as those immigrants are documented and have insurance.

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  6. I may be wrong about low earners getting the SS back at the end of the year. Tell me if so.

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  7. "l", you've got it backwards. Illegal immigrants pay money into Social Security, but they
    don't take out benefits.

    The Conservative Bullshit Machine has somehow convinced millions of Americans that illegal immigrants leech off of Social Security without paying, when in fact it's exactly the opposite.

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  8. Wasn't talking about the illegal immigrants. I was talking about the citizen born kiddos who are likely going to be low earners. But there are exceptions to that, I have a good friend who has a CPA and her parents are undocumented.

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  9. If likelihood of being a low earner should make you not entitled to citizenship, then we're going to have to stop granting it to a much larger portion of the US population than the children of undocumented immigrants. If the problem we're really talking about it weath redistribution, that's a very different issue.

    Also, w/r/t the number of people we remove (we say "remove" instead of "deport" these days, because apparently someone thought that sounded nicer) vs. the number of undocumented aliens here, I think it's worth noting that illegal entry has decreased by 67% in recent years. We're actually arguing about a problem that's decreasing, at least for now.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/01/AR2010090106940.html

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  10. OK, fair enough.

    So "l", just to make it clear, are you saying that it's a good reason to revoke birthright citizenship because people whose parents are not citizens are likely to be poorer than the average, and thus will be a (very slight) net drain on the Social Security system?

    (I say "very slight" because what people get out of the system is very close to what they put in.)

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  11. Also, I should add that even if birthright citizenship were abolished, people born and raised here would still be eligible to take citizenship when they turned 18 (like Jim did). That would make them just as eligible for Social Security benefits as if they had been born citizens.

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  12. Just throwing out possible cons of en-masse low earner immigration. I don't know enough about the numbers to say if it's an actual worry, but it's something I thought of to look into.

    I did like the article on the 'voluntary' tax payments. Pretty cool and admirable, but not a good endorsement on keeping immigration policy the way it is now.

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