Today’s Washington Post discusses The Birthright Debate — whether the 14th Amendment should be changed so that children born in the United States to illegal immigrant parents are not automatically citizens.
This, to me, is the wrong question. I have no problem with the children’s being citizens. However, the parents should still be deported. After all, criminals do not escape jail time simply because they have children. Still, to avoid breaking up families, we should offer the parents a choice — leave your children here to be US citizens, or take them with you when you are deported and forfeit their US citizenship.
That is the simple solution.
Now, what I really want to talk about is the author’s claim that,
What is needed is… serious legislation that provides a path to citizenship for those who have been in the country illegally but have otherwise been law-abiding, productive members of society.
Of course, he gave no reason why such legislation is needed, because there is no such reason. Reason is foreign to liberals. Hence the idea of the “otherwise law-abiding, productive” illegal immigrant.
Let’s see if we can apply a little reason to see whether that mythical being can exist. How can an illegal immigrant be productive. Well, I assume he would have to be productive. To be productive, would he not need an occupation? You know, a JOB? If he has a job, he is, by definition, not “otherwise law-abiding.”
Well, you say, what about volunteer work — isn’t that productive? It certainly can be, but it also does not pay. So how does this illegal immigrant doing only volunteer work support himself? Off the charity of others, no doubt. But almost invariably the cost of living in the illegal’s home country is lower than it is here, so if he is living off the charity of others, would not that charity go further if he were in his home country? Our poverty level is set at $10,830/yr. for a single person. The World Bank poverty level is $730/yr. So keeping someone out of poverty is almost 15 times more expensive here than in the Third World, whence come most illegal immigrants.
Why do liberals have compassion for the illegal immigrant, and want our government to support him, but not for the 15 others who did not break our laws and whom we could be supporting instead?






