Thread: Anchor children a weighty part of immigration debate

4/26/2009

Anchor children a weighty part of immigration debate (4/26/09)
The Issue: Four million children of illegal immigrants are American citizens, making deportation problematic.

Our Opinion: Our inability to agree about how to resolve this means that the issue will remain with us.

Add to the raucous debate over illegal immigration the problem of what to do with 4 million children, the U.S.-born offspring of illegal immigrants who are full-fledged citizens because they were born on American soil.

The children who are citizens constitute about three-fourths of the estimated 5.5 million children of illegal immigrants in the country, according to a recent Pew Hispanic Center study, and many of the families are mixed, with only one parent in the country illegally. One in three of them is poor.

Because their citizenship gives their parents a reason to remain, the children are known as anchor children. Their presence poses a daunting, three-horned dilemma for immigration authorities: Deport one or both of their parents, and the children become wards of the state, or, in the case of mixed families, a child is deprived of the support of one parent. If the child must leave along with the parents, then it is a de facto deportation, trampling on a citizen's rights and likely sending that child into harsh economic circumstances. Allow the illegal immigrant parent or parents to stay, and we have disregarded our own laws.

Activists have taken up predictably belligerent positions: In one corner are the adherents of strict interpretation of immigration law, who say that we should deal harshly and immediately with those who broke the law by entering the country illegally and now take advantage of our social services - especially schools and hospitals, but they are also accused of taking welfare - and take jobs away from American citizens. Deport them, they say.

In the other corner are those who call for widespread amnesty in the name of compassion. They argue that, while the immigrants broke the law, the overwhelming majority of them are otherwise law-abiding people who work hard at low-paying, labor-intensive, dirty jobs nobody else wants, in agriculture, the restaurant and hospital industries, and elsewhere. Immigrants pay Social Security taxes under assumed names with no hope of ever collecting benefits. Pardon them, say the activists, and provide for future immigrants to arrive in an orderly, legal fashion, with a well-defined path to full citizenship.

The amnesty partisans accuse those who argue for deportation of being driven by racism. The anti-illegal immigration activists shout back that many people of Hispanic descent, especially those living on our southern border, also favor drastic steps to close the border and curb illegal immigration.

As the debate simmers, the fate of 4 million children remains to be decided. A permanent solution would require either a constitutional amendment specifying that children born on U.S. soil are citizens only if their parents are U.S. citizens or an end to illegal immigration, a Herculean task, given the difficulties of finding, rounding up and deporting an estimated 12 million illegal aliens, the proximity of poor countries in our hemisphere pumping out economic refugees and our laudable unwillingness to use inhumane measures to shut down the influx.

But even if President Barack Obama's administration decides to grant an amnesty, such as President Ronald Reagan did when he signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986, it will not resolve the status of the anchor children. At best it will reset the counter, not to zero, but far less than 4 million.

And then it will start ticking slowly upward again.
http://www.readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=135316

It is standard international practice to send the child(ren) out of the country with their parents then permit them to return as adults provided there are no personal infractions.

Deport one or both of their parents, and the children become wards of the state, or, in the case of mixed families, a child is deprived of the support of one parent.

This gets me annoyed because frequently the family is mixed because legal immigrants financed the illegal alien's passage into the country.

Anchor babies don't belong to the government, they belong to their parents.

If their parents are Mexican, then the anchor babies are also Mexican Citizens.

Dixie

You don't get rewarded for breaking the laws in any form illegal parents. Deport them all, we cannot take a chance on leftist extremists, anymore.

WE NEED TO GET A CASE ON THE CURRENT MISINTERPRETATION OF THE 14TH TO SCOTUS!!!

Right now, the court is as "in our favor" as it's going to be. ...why hasn't anyone done this? It's so blatantly incorrect!

This is the most pressing problem in the whole illegal alien fiasco. Most of the illegal alien males here working also have dependent females and U.S. born children. They have moved into communities, started their kids in American schools and never plan to leave. Unless the 14th amendment is changed, there will be no significant decrease in this population, I'm afraid.

Originally Posted by edstate

WE NEED TO GET A CASE ON THE CURRENT MISINTERPRETATION OF THE 14TH TO SCOTUS!!!

We are working on that here in CA with a ballot initiative: http://www.taxpayerrevolution.org/index ... 2&Itemid=2.

If you want this to go to SCOTUS, support the initiative!