When Margaret and I lived in Silver Spring, near the border of Maryland and Washington, D.C., our community was overwhelmed by illegal immigration. We lived near the area with the highest concentration of illegal immigrants in Montgomery county — in all of Maryland and Washington, D.C., really. As a liberal, I was aghast to learn how much these people hated me, hated women, hated gays and lesbians, hated black people, hated Americans, hated people from other countries that spoke their language — basically, they were a boiling cauldron of hatred, ingratitude, entitlement and determination to impose their culture and language and we could kiss their asses because it was our duty, in order to prove what nice people we were, to hand over everything we had to them. It had a lot in common with being mugged.
This bothered me. It still does.
I do not have a problem with legal immigrants. Why, some of my best friends are legal immigrants (for real). However, I think America’s laws against illegal immigration should be enforced. If someone comes here illegally and gets caught, the very nicest thing that should happen to them is to get thrown out that very day and be barred ever from entering the U.S. again. What? You’re going to argue they just want to make a better life? SO DOES A BANK ROBBER!
A common goal of illegal immigrants is to get a pregnant woman over the border so she can have a child who is an American citizen due to being born in America — birthright citizenship. The child is called an anchor baby and entitles a chain of relatives to immigrate.
On March 28, 2010, George Will published a column at Townhall.com explaining the history of the misunderstanding that led to permitting birthright citizenship. I’m including it here since the overwhelming number of people now living in the U.S. illegally are from countries and cultures where women are property and gays and lesbians get killed for being homosexual. They are in a position to vote away my equality as a woman and to bar any hope homosexuals have of attaining equality through the states legislatures and Congress. I am entitled to fight back. Here is a sample from Will’s column, but be sure to read the whole thing:
A parent from a poor country, writes professor Lino Graglia of the University of Texas law school, “can hardly do more for a child than make him or her an American citizen, entitled to all the advantages of the American welfare state.” Therefore, “It is difficult to imagine a more irrational and self-defeating legal system than one which makes unauthorized entry into this country a criminal offense and simultaneously provides perhaps the greatest possible inducement to illegal entry.”
Writing in the Texas Review of Law and Politics, Graglia says this irrationality is rooted in a misunderstanding of the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” What was this intended or understood to mean by those who wrote it in 1866 and ratified it in 1868? The authors and ratifiers could not have intended birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants because in 1868 there were and never had been any illegal immigrants because no law ever had restricted immigration.
If those who wrote and ratified the 14th Amendment had imagined laws restricting immigration — and had anticipated huge waves of illegal immigration — is it reasonable to presume they would have wanted to provide the reward of citizenship to the children of the violators of those laws? Surely not.
(snip)
Appropriately, in 1884 the Supreme Court held that children born to Indian parents were not born “subject to” U.S. jurisdiction because, among other reasons, the person so born could not change his status by his “own will without the action or assent of the United States.” And “no one can become a citizen of a nation without its consent.” Graglia says this decision “seemed to establish” that U.S. citizenship is “a consensual relation, requiring the consent of the United States.” So: “This would clearly settle the question of birthright citizenship for children of illegal aliens. There cannot be a more total or forceful denial of consent to a person’s citizenship than to make the source of that person’s presence in the nation illegal.”
Congress has heard testimony estimating that more than two-thirds of all births in Los Angeles public hospitals, and more than half of all births in that city, and nearly 10 percent of all births in the nation in recent years, have been to illegal immigrant mothers. Graglia seems to establish that there is no constitutional impediment to Congress ending the granting of birthright citizenship to persons whose presence here is “not only without the government’s consent but in violation of its law.”
P.S.
One of the things that astonishes me about illegal immigration is how the conditions that drive people to leave their countries are not intractable, as Leftists/liberals like to portray them. Generally they are coming from countries with enough natural resources to prosper. Mexico is an oil-rich nation! Cuba could be a paradise! They are escaping systems they could fix and if they did, they would make the world a better place while they are improving their own lives.
We could fix the birthright citizenship problem with a one sentence law: A baby born to anyone legally in this country is a citizen.
There is a war going on between the Latino gangs and the black gangs over control of drugs and prostitution. Personally if we could get the innocents out of the way I’d vote to give ’em machine guns and kill each other until there are nine gangbangers left in each city and then swoop in and arrest the survivors. Unfortunately we can’t move the innocents out.
This problem is only intractable because of politics. Oddly, cities and states are going broke because of the illegals. The hospitals go broke treating them. The jails and prisons are bursting at the seams, overfull of them. Yet anyone noticing this is a raaaaacist!
Nobody cares that Mexico fiercely protects her southern border, yet we can’t. Stupid, just stupid. Meanwhile, the illegals try hard to turn this country into what they left. I dunno. I’m pretty sure that anyone elected to public office has a secret pre-frontal lobotomy right after the election, ensuring that they will steadfastly refuse to do what is needed to protect their own effing children, much less the country.
.-= Peter´s last blog ..Quiet Time =-.
“The vast majority of illegal immigrants are from cultures where women are property and that [hate homosexuals].” I assume you are referring to Islamists. Are you seriously suggesting that the number of Islamic illegal immigrants is greater than the number of Hispanic Roman Catholic illegal immigrants?
Now if the latter were to (G-d forbid) start converting to Islam en masse, then we would have an even bigger problem on our hands.
.-= New Class Traitor´s last blog ..Just because video: Rush, “Subdivisions” =-.
New Class Traitor,
I am not only referring to Muslims. My experiences with the Hispanic Roman Catholic and Asian immigrants in Silver Spring is that they also regard women as property and believe they have a duty to kill gay people. Certainly I do not expect them to vote for my equality either as a woman or a homosexual.
Cynthia
Hi Cynthia:
I don’t know if it is pc or not to say it, but for me it is necessary to embrace somehow the culture of the country you’re newly living in. For instance, when I was young I lived for a few months in West Germany, and it was a lot of fun for me because I could speak german. But when you’re despising your new country from the very start (and refusing to learn a new language), you should be asking yourself “Hey, what I’m really doing here?”
Fun fact 1: I’ve read in Big Hollywood in a recent Andy Garcia movie critique that Cuba was the 8th world economy before the so-called revolution came (for most of the people then, it was only a rebellion).
Fun fact 2: That is why I understood and supported that concept of Bush of bringing democracy to the entire Middle East. A society with clear rights and liberty (and accountable goverments btw) is less likely to produce emigrants (Europe should have recognized this, starting with France and her riots).
Sounds anyway like a new post for my blog…
.-= Dr. sipmac´s last blog ..Latin Soul Forever! =-.
Dr. Sipmac,
Democracy alone is not enough. Capitalism really only works in societies that have separation of church and state, that are not theocracies and are not aristocracies. That is, there has to be individual liberty and social mobility, otherwise known as the ability to rise on the basis of one’s achievements — a meritocracy.
Cynthia
I agree 100%, and I’m the child of a legal South American immigrant. Latin America is wealthy in natural resources, and it is the corrupt incompetent governments that keep the people poor.
I read one report that estimated that up to 40% of Mexican makes make it across the border illegally at one point or another, thereby leaving their wives, mothers, etc. with no male support or protection, in a country where being male trumps being female by a long shot. These same countries treat illegal immigrants viciously, yet demand – DEMAND – that we give their citizens a free pass. What better way to get rid of your angry young men and women who, if forced to stay in their own country, might agitate for reformation and actually bring it about?
I think the two parts of your posts that are particularly important are these: (1) actually stating the cultural/moral differences between these immigrants and mainstream America, and (2) highlighting the real danger of voter dilution.
I have lived in and visited a lot of these countries. I live in the U.S. for a reason.
Mexico is an oil-rich nation!
Filled with corruption and historically, one-party rule.
Cuba could be a paradise!
It was. The Castro brothers have subsequently run the place into the ground and caused the people to be paranoid to one degree or another. And now The One wishes to cozy up to them, instead of las Damas de Blanco.
I enjoyed your post. BTW, I found it at The Old Jarhead blog, if that matters to you.
I agree with you and George Will that this would be an elegant solution to many–perhaps most–of the economic and security problems that come with widespread illegal immigration.
We have always been a mostly accepting society, and the legal immigrants who have come here have given the USA hybrid vigor economically (as well as some really good food). We would not–could not–be the people we are today without their contributions. But, they came here intending to become “one of us.” They have and will assimilate. Those who intend to remain apart, or worse, who intend to change us to be like where they came from, will not assimilate. Tolerance is largely an American virtue, and isn’t easily learned by non-assimilators.
I think most people like to think they can help those who are trying to join the group by following the rules. The problem is we’ve been rewarding those who didn’t follow the rules.