Thread: Push begins to revise 14th Amendment's birthright citizenshi

Push begins to revise 14th Amendment's birthright citizenship

Gannett News Service
February 3, 2011
By Alan Gomez

Republican lawmakers in Congress and in more than over a couple of dozen state legislatures are fast-tracking an effort to alter the interpretation of the 14th Amendment so that the children of illegal immigrants born in the USA are no longer granted citizenship. The U.S. is only one of just a very few countries who still allow automatic citizenship.

When announcing a plan for state legislation, a group led by Pennsylvania state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe claimed "thousands of illegal aliens have crossed U.S. borders to give birth and exploit their child as an 'anchor baby.' "

Critics of those legislative efforts are pointing to a new report by the Pew Hispanic Center that found a vast majority of illegal immigrants who had children in the U.S. in 2010 had entered the country several years earlier.

The report found that 350,000 babies were born in the U.S. between March 2009 and March 2010 to at least one illegal immigrant parent. Of those parents, 91 percent arrived in the U.S. before 2008.

"It's real concrete data that I think destroys this notion that immigrant women are crossing the border illegally and having babies," said Angela Kelley of the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank.

Metcalfe, who founded State Legislators for Legal Immigration, said that despite the report's findings, birthright citizenship remains a huge lure for foreigners as they consider sneaking into the country.

He said many illegal immigrants only come to the USA for jobs and public benefits. But he said he has spoken with people along the Southwest border who tell him about pregnant women making the dangerous crossing through the mountains and deserts just to give birth in the USA.

"Whether it's thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands that are born here, it's still a very major incentive," he said. "I think it's beyond being deniable."

Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, which supports a process for some illegal immigrants to become citizens, said "anchor babies" are a myth.

He said a baby born in the USA to illegal immigrant parents must wait until they're 21 to sponsor their parents for citizenship, and the parents would then have to return to their home country for 10 years before qualifying.

Sharry said it's highly unlikely that parents would rush a pregnant woman to the USA on the hope that they could become citizens three decades down the road.

Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican who is sponsoring a federal bill to revise the 14th Amendment, said that even if the number of people crossing over to immediately have a child is small, it's still a very big problem.

"Do the open-borders people think that's all right?"

"It isn't a big enough deal that we should fix it?" he said.

"It's absolutely wrong to reward people for very bad behavior."

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Everyone needs to be on the same page, so they can hurry and cease undocumented aliens from using the U.S. as a place to plant seeds that will someday become Americans worst nightmare.