http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compreh...rm_Act_of_2007Originally Posted by ']['ear
They tried, remember?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compreh...rm_Act_of_2007
They tried, remember?
I enjoy blank walls.
Because they're an umbrella group and the different constituencies, their representatives, and the pressure groups couldn't come up with anything approaching a consensus on what to do. You know that.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1591/pub...ation-law-poll
Plus it looks like a plurality of Democrats support the Arizona law (and a majority supports the individual parts of it).
Hope is the denial of reality
Yes well "only Democrats think the Constitution is dumb."http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1591/pub...ation-law-poll
Plus it looks like a plurality of Democrats support the Arizona law (and a majority supports the individual parts of it).
Heh, I wonder how she felt about the Arizona law. If I'm unlucky enough to see her again, I might just give into the temptation to ask.
We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.
That bill was supposed to be a compromise between both sides of the issue. Neither side liked it because the other side got what they wanted. Is the lesson here to never compromise?
I believe that we should allow immigration without constraint. That will raise the cost of labor in regions consuming our jobs and decrease the cost of labor here. After all, isn't that what we've been striving for the last 4 decades? God bless my soul, Reagan and Nixon may have been right.
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
No criteria what so ever?
Really?
Brevior saltare cum deformibus viris est vita
Now there's a suggestion from the GOP to have "hearings" about repealing the 14th Amendment. Presumably to address "anchor babies".
Idiotic demagoguery. But once again, we're not going to have a mature debate about this until the border is less porous. When it's as porous as it is, people will think up stupid ideas as short term solutions.
EG pointless shenanigans like this: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/us/02guard.html
Although he's joking, I believe this.I believe that we should allow immigration without constraint. That will raise the cost of labor in regions consuming our jobs and decrease the cost of labor here. After all, isn't that what we've been striving for the last 4 decades? God bless my soul, Reagan and Nixon may have been right.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000..._WSJ_US_News_5One in twelve babies born in the U.S. in 2008 were the offspring of illegal immigrants, according to a new study, a statistic that could inflame the debate over birthright citizenship.
Undocumented immigrants make up slightly more than 4% of the U.S. adult population. However, their babies represented twice that share, or 8%, of all births on U.S. soil in 2008, according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center's report.
"Unauthorized immigrants are younger than the rest of the population, are more likely to be married and have higher fertility rates than the rest of the population," said Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer at Pew in Washington, D.C.
The report, based on Census Bureau data and analysis of demographic characteristics of the undocumented population, also found that the lion's share, or 79%, of the 5.1 million children of illegal immigrants residing in the U.S. in 2009 were born in the U.S. and therefore citizens.
About 11 million undocumented immigrants live in the U.S. Latinos account for 75% of undocumented U.S. immigrants and about 85% of the births among that population.
Amid a heated national debate over illegal immigration, some Republican politicians have been calling for changes to the Constitution's 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof," in order to deny citizenship to children born in the U.S. to unlawful residents.
Late last month, South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham announced his support for reconsidering automatic U.S. citizenship for babies born to undocumented immigrants. He said the status quo enticed people to enter the country illegally and have children to qualify for U.S. benefits.
Under U.S. law, children have to wait until they reach the age of 21 before they can petition for permanent legal residency for their parents.
Recently, Mr. Graham's idea has been embraced by several other lawmakers, including Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl of Arizona, where state legislators passed a controversial law to quash illegal immigration. A federal judge stayed major portions of the law on July 28, and Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Legislation to amend birthright citizenship stalled when it was introduced in the past decade in the House. It would require a vote of two-thirds of the House and Senate, and would have to be ratified by three-fourths of state legislatures.
Proponents of amending the 14th Amendment, which was enacted in 1868, say it was intended to guarantee citizenship to freed slaves after the Civil War, not the offspring of illegal immigrants. Their proposals are expected to appeal to conservative Republican voters as immigration emerges as a central issue in November's elections. GOP opponents of repealing birthright citizenship say it undermines the party's electoral prospects among Hispanics, the nation's largest minority and fastest-growing group.
Mr. Passel said that the Pew analysis found that more than 80% of the undocumented immigrant mothers who gave birth in the U.S. had been in the country at least a year, and that many had been here about a decade.
From the WSJ opinion page:
This idea is a total non-starter, I'm aghast that people keep kicking it around. But, once again, symptomatic of the federal government's failure to properly control our borders and manage a proper immigration policy to help people immigrate legally.OPINION AUGUST 11, 2010
The Case For Birthright Citizenship
Since the abolition of slavery, we have never denied citizenship to any group of children born in the U.S. Why change now?
By LINDA CHAVEZ
Republican leaders in Congress are now flirting with changing portions of the 14th Amendment—which grants citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof"—to deny citizenship to children born here to illegal immigrants.
The idea of modifying birthright citizenship has been around for decades but was previously relegated to the fringes of the immigration restriction movement. Yet in recent days, Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Jon Kyl have embraced the idea; Senate and House GOP leaders Mitch McConnell and John Boehner have proposed hearings.
Repealing birthright citizenship is a terrible idea. It will unquestionably jeopardize the electoral future of the GOP by alienating Hispanics—the largest minority and fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population. More importantly, ending birthright citizenship would fundamentally change what it means to be an American.
Proponents of repeal argue that the 14th Amendment was passed after the Civil War to guarantee citizenship to freed slaves, and that it was never intended to grant rights to the offspring of illegal aliens. But this argument is a non sequitur. At the time of the adoption of the amendment, there was no category of "illegal alien" because immigration was unrestricted and unregulated. If you secured passage to the United States, or simply walked across the open border with Mexico or Canada, you could stay permanently as a resident alien or apply to be naturalized after a certain number of years. And if you happened to give birth while still an alien, your child was automatically a citizen—a right dating back to English common law.
The most serious challenge to birthright citizenship for the children of aliens came in 1898, and it involved a class of aliens who were every bit as unpopular as present-day illegal immigrants: the Chinese. Like most illegal immigrants today, the Chinese came here to work as common laborers, eagerly recruited by employers but often deeply resented by the workers with whom they competed. This popular resentment, coupled with racial prejudice, led to America's first immigration restriction law, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. It was followed by successively more restrictive federal and state laws that denied Chinese aliens—and, later, other Asians—the right to own property, to marry, to return to the U.S. if they left, or to become American citizens.
With anti-Chinese alien sentiment still high, the Supreme Court took up the case U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark in 1898. Born in San Francisco to alien parents who later returned to China, Wong travelled to his parents' homeland for a visit and was denied re-entry on his return in 1895. The government argued that Wong had no right to birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment because his parents remained "subjects of the emperor of China" not subject to U.S. jurisdiction, even while residing in California at the time of his birth. In a 7-2 vote, the Supreme Court ruled otherwise.
The court found that the only persons Congress intended to exclude from birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment were children born to diplomats—an ancient, universally recognized exception even under common law; Indians, who by treaty were considered members of sovereign nations; and children of an occupying enemy. "The amendment, in clear words and in manifest intent, includes the children born within the territory of the United States of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States," wrote Justice Horace Gray for the majority. To hold otherwise, he noted, would be to deny citizenship to the descendants of English, Irish, Germans and other aliens who had always been considered citizens even if their parents were citizens of other countries. For more than a 100 years, the court has consistently upheld this analysis.
Our history has been largely one of continuously expanding the community of people regarded as Americans, from native-born whites to freed slaves to Indians to naturalized citizens of all races and ethnicities. Since the abolition of slavery, we have never denied citizenship to any group of children born in the U.S.—even when we denied citizenship to their parents, as we did Asian immigrants from 1882 to 1943. This expansive view of who is an American has been critical to our successful assimilation of millions of newcomers.
Conservatives should not betray these values based on a misreading of American history and legal precedent. Instead of amending the Constitution to eliminate "anchor babies"—the ugly term opponents of birthright citizenship use to describe these U.S. citizens—Republicans should be helping them become good Americans.
Ms. Chavez is chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity in Falls Church, Va. and was director of public liaison in the Reagan White House.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...258065684.html
It's like reinstating the draft. They know it won't go anywhere, they get at least some points for thinking about the issue even if the idea is a bad one, most people don't care because it IS a non-starter and they recognize it amounts to white noise, and the fanatic fringe who don't think it's nuts flock to "the few who actually see sense."
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
Political hot potatoe. Are you aghast at the likes of McCain, Mitchell, Graham et al throwing around terms like "anchor babies", "birth tourism", or tossing the 14th Amendment into the game? Defining or redefining citizenship is not limited to the US, either:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=129129391An Israeli government plan to deport at least 400 children of foreign workers has created deep divisions in the country. The children are to be deported because they don't meet new residency requirements — such as living in Israel for the last five years and attending grade school.
But the decision has prompted heated debate among Israeli Jews over who should have a right to Israeli citizenship.
I am annoyed they are taking this tack, that's why I posted that.
As for Israel, they've always wrangled over issues like that. The question of "who is a Jew" in a Jewish state (that also has a large non-Jewish minority) is endlessly complicated, so their situation is rather different than ours.
I'm annoyed by this tactic, too. It's completely at odds with our history as Americans, where we all came from imm'grunts who gave birth to citizens.
Taken to the nth degree, we're all interlopers except the Native Indians, and all babies are "Anchors" to our communities, states, and the nation. The only conclusion I can make about the GOP is that they're floundering, using the Fear Factor to appeal to emotions about Us vs Them. Xenophobia really.
(And it's not limited to immigration, but also religion, sexuality, marriage, language, all sorts of things. They're becoming the party of Angry White Property Owners.)
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