Thread: Propoganda Alert: Nickelodeon Tonight 9 / 8CST

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainmen ... immig.html

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Nickelodeon offers kids'-eye view of immigration

Saturday, March 15th 2008, 4:00 AM
Linda Ellerbee


I’M AMERICAN! THEY’RE NOT! Sunday at 9 p.m. Nickelodeon.

Paola is 13. Her sister, Vanessa, is 14. Their brother, Nahum, is 17. They live in a comfortable house in Roswell, N.M.

One morning, they heard a commotion downstairs and found agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) putting their father in handcuffs - the first step toward deporting both parents to their native Mexico.

This story is one of several Linda Ellerbee uses Sunday night in a "Nick News" special to illuminate a troubling consequence of our ongoing response to the complex issue of immigration.

Anyone born in the U.S. is a U.S. citizen, even if his or her parents are not. So if a family stays after a child is born, it's possible the parents could be subject to deportation while the child is not.

An estimated 3 million children are now in that situation. Any morning, they could wake up to hear their parents being deported.

And then what do they do?

In the case of Paola, Vanessa and Nahum, they and their parents decided they should stay in Roswell, continuing the only life and schooling they had ever known.

Luckily, their parents were friends with a retired judge who lives nearby and who agreed to become the teenagers' legal guardian. He takes care of some paperwork and satisfies the state that there is a responsible adult available in their lives.

But beyond that, the teenagers live alone. They'd been doing it for about a year when the Nick cameras filmed them, and while they had established a workable routine, their lives are clearly still dislocated. They have to travel to Mexico to see the parents who had been part of their lives every day since they were born.

Ellerbee starts the show by stressing that she's not taking sides in the larger immigration debate, just reminding us of its impact on children.

She visits three families - two where the parents were deported, one where the parents are still here and the children do their homework by flashlight to minimize any attention they might attract.

She also speaks with Kelly Nantel, press secretary for ICE, who says the agency sympathizes with the plight of the children. But it's "a situation their parents put them in," she says, and the agency is just doing its job.

The solution, she says, is simple: Undocumented workers should pack up and go back home and not have any children before they do.

Her tone and the agency's acronym are a good fit, but here again, Ellerbee doesn't use her comments as a door into the larger debate - just an illustration of the ominous cloud hanging over the lives of some 3 million young U.S. citizens.

It's a somber half-hour that, if anything, makes the immigration question even tougher. But it's exactly what news needs to be doing.

I don't suppose they happened to mention that according to the transcripts of the debate of the enactment of the 14th amendment, the children of illegal aliens would not be citizens.

She visits three families - two where the parents were deported, one where the parents are still here and the children do their homework by flashlight to minimize any attention they might attract.

Homework by flashlight--so a home without lights at night isn't suspect of possible illegal activity?

"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power."
Franklin D. Roosevelt

She visits three families - two where the parents were deported, one where the parents are still here and the children do their homework by flashlight to minimize any attention they might attract.

Please....I don't by that for a second. Flashlight because maybe they don't have electric but not so they don't draw attention. Stick up a blanket over the window. I find it hard to believe families are cowering all night long when there's a flurry of activity all day. Getting a bit extreeme here....... who's staying with the kids who parents were deported? Another family member....they certainly aren't "alone" or child and family services would have them. I'm not so cold hearted as to not have feelings about this but spare me the drama to make it worse than it really is. They have their parents to thank for this.......

The problem with the 14th Amendment arises from the written opinion of Supreme Court Justice Horace Gray at the time of the Wong Kim Ark decision. Wong Kim Ark was the American born son of legal immigrant Chinese who had arrived under a treaty that the immigrant Chinese could not be naturalized. They had returned to China and Wong Kim Ark cme back as an adult. The decision was that the children of the immigrants even under those circumstances were citizens. Horace Gray wrote the decision up in such a way that it was possible to use as precedent making children even of illegal aliens citizens.

Originally Posted by Richard

The problem with the 14th Amendment arises from the written opinion of Supreme Court Justice Horace Gray at the time of the Wong Kim Ark decision. Wong Kim Ark was the American born son of legal immigrant Chinese who had arrived under a treaty that the immigrant Chinese could not be naturalized. They had returned to China and Wong Kim Ark came back as an adult. The decision was that the children of the immigrants even under those circumstances were citizens. Horace Gray wrote the decision up in such a way that it was possible to use as precedent making children even of illegal aliens citizens.

The Supreme Court made this decision so that the children of immigrants could become citizens even if their parents could not. At the time it probably seemed a reasonable thing to do, since there were not any illegal aliens to speak of.
Everything is totally the opposite today, every non-felon legal immigrant is allowed to become a citizen and their minor children are given automatic citizenship at the same time. Plus on the other hand we have 20 million illegal aliens. So this ruling should be put on the scrap pile of history.