Follow Up on Anchor Babies

(to Yukari Ryle on FB who debated my prior post with her son)

Dense is the right word for my prose. On balance anchor babies are a bad thing. Solving the problem raises some interesting issues. Do we pass another Constitutional Amendment? Do we pass a law declaring that the children of "camp followers" exclusion applies to the categories I listed? Can you hear the bien pessants scream if the issue is phrased in those terms?

On balance I agree with you about strictly interpreting the Constitution. Sloppily written feel good Amendments and Laws give to much power to Judges and got us into this mess. Most of the intentions behind the XIVth Amendment were honorable, ensuring that freed slaves were given the vote and treated as citizens. The poor construction of the document has lead to unintended consequences.

May I suggest to your son that hypocrisy is the wrong charge to throw against people who question the citizenship of the children of illegal aliens. He may have meant that it sounds unfeeling but that is a different thing. First the universal question in any dispute with an adolescent should be "Who owns this problem?" The person primarily responsible for the child is the parent, who has no claim on the United States other than that manufactured on behalf of the child they produced. We are a generous nation and I favor a generous immigration policy but I do not see why we should cede the determination of who gets in to people who are already by definition breaking the law.

What reform school does your offspring attend?

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It is interesting that Barack Obama, Sr. would under current law, I am not sure about the law 50 years ago but it was probably the same, have been ineligible for United States citizenship because he was a polygamist. That did not prevent his obtaining a non-immigrant visa which he used to enter the country and then presumably get married and father a child.

Should the law be changed to waive the bar on polygamists in general or for those who enter and subsequently find a woman, or a man for that matter, to sponsor them through matrimony? Should it be changed to bar people ineligible for citizenship from obtaining non-immigrant visas? Should the law be changed to deny the children of polygamists citizenship? These are very complicated issues.