Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
Birthright Citizenship
American Heritage Dictionary Redefines “Anchor Baby” Term as “Offensive” and “Disparaging”
02 months ago
The firestorm around the inclusion of the term “anchor baby” in the new edition of the American Heritage Dictionary has led to a dramatic reversal in the definition. Not only did the executive editor, Steven Kleinelder, emphatically apologize for the initial definition, he promised swift action to change it. By Monday morning, the term was labeled as “offensive.” By Monday afternoon, a new definition appeared online, one that was crafted to reflect more accurately just how artificial a term it really is:
anchor baby n. Offensive Used as a disparaging term for a child born to a noncitizen mother in a country that grants automatic citizenship to children born on its soil, especially when the child’s birthplace is thought to have been chosen in order to improve the mother’s or other relatives’ chances of securing eventual citizenship.
This is the kind of controversy that doesn’t fade away quickly, and many argue that the term is so offensive that it shouldn’t appear in the dictionary at all. I understand but disagree with that position, largely because the term, however offensive, exists as a political and practical reality. I think the new definition validates what many outraged voices in blogs, on Twitter, and in the press have been saying all along: “anchor baby” is a term that shouldn’t exist but does because immigration restrictionists are really good at creating words that generate fear.
While the origins are not reflected in the definition, characterizing the term as both “offensive” and “disparaging” says volumes about how it is used in real life. I would much rather have a curious student or citizen have the ability to look up the term in the dictionary and find this definition than to find no guidance and accept the meaning and agenda of restrictionists who used it.
And of course, that agenda is the repeal or amendment of the Fourteenth Amendment to eliminate citizenship at birth. The Immigration Policy Center has published numerous articles on the legal and practical problems inherent in that position. This position, in turn, arises from the misplaced notion that the problems plaguing our current immigration system would somehow be eliminated if only we could prevent persons here without legal status from having children.
It’s not solely the dictionary’s job to lay out the politics behind words. It is the job of advocates and scholars, policy-makers and politicians, community leaders, people of faith, and everyone else who values a constructive solution to immigration reform.
We must not only monitor how terms are used and defined, but must work to make hateful terms archaic. If we challenge the people who prefer fear to solutions, and direct our energies affirmatively towards an immigration system that is thoughtful, fair and reflects our country’s needs as well as our values, then hateful terms like “anchor baby” can become part of the past.
Photo by Péter Gudella.
“Anchor Baby” Added to New American Heritage Dictionary
02 months ago
The degree to which the immigration debate has coarsened over the last few years is no more evident than in the pages of the recently released fifth edition of the New American Heritage Dictionary. Among the new entries is the term “anchor baby.” You might think that the definition would read something like: slang, a pejorative description of a child born in the United States to parents without legal status, implying that the parents intend to leverage the child’s citizenship to “anchor” their own presence in the U.S.” You would be wrong.
Instead, the definition reads:
anchor baby n. A child born to a noncitizen mother in a country that grants automatic citizenship to children born on its soil, especially such a child born to parents seeking to secure eventual citizenship for themselves and often other members of their family.
According to the dictionary’s executive editor, the trick to defining new words is to “to define them objectively without taking sides and just presenting what it is. And, in some cases up, you know, anchor baby is definitely a very charged, politically charged word.”
Although the politically charged nature of the word made defining it difficult, the editors ultimately felt it was best to put the word in with no commentary, claiming “it falls into a gray area where we felt it was better just to state what it was, and then people can filter their own life experiences through the word and judgments on it as they see fit.”
The trouble with this philosophy is that “anchor baby” is not a neutral term, nor from what we have been able to find, has it ever been. First, it appears to be a wholly American term, one mired in the politics of anti-immigrant rhetoric. Those who use it are not in the business of clinically describing some sort of sociological phenomena. They are instead intent on suggesting that people come to the country illegally and deliberately have babies in order to use their children’s citizenship to acquire legal status of their own.
Second, the New American Heritage Dictionary’s definition ignores the very specific intent of the term and, in fact, gives it more credibility by treating it as some sort of universal description of children who acquire citizenship at birth. This masks the poisonous and derogatory nature of the term, a term which demeans both parent and child and in the process suggests that it is acceptable to call a child born in the U.S—i.e. an American citizen—an “anchor baby.”
What is particularly disturbing about this new definition is that it confuses popularity of a term with neutrality. While the term anchor baby has skyrocketed in usage in the last decade, that usage appears to be spurred by the general explosion of anti-immigrant rhetoric, blogs, and other media outlets. Objective reporters tend to put the phrase in quotations, to indicate that the term is a loaded one.
In fact, back in 2006, Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn received complaints about his reference to the child of an illegal immigrant seeking sanctuary in a Chicago church as an “anchor baby.” Zorn found that the term isn’t a neutral descriptor, but instead, according to one of his sources, it’s a way to dehumanize the children of undocumented immigrants. Upon reflection, Zorn said that the complaints he received were a “good enough reason to regret having used it and to decide not to use it in the future. Sound arguments don’t need loaded language.”
And loaded language needs to be identified as such in the dictionary. The New American Heritage Dictionary acknowledges the derogatory nature of hundreds of terms. By failing to do so with the term “anchor baby,” however, the dictionary implies that the term is acceptable in common usage and misleads the public by insinuating that giving birth to a child in the United States necessarily carries with it the intention of using that child for immigration status.
In an era where politicians and pundits have no qualms about being imprecise, dictionary editors need to be—even if that means calling a term “highly charged,” “political,” or down right nasty. While dictionaries may be neutral, language isn’t. “Anchor baby” is a term that epitomizes the way words reflect and reframe a debate.
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UPDATE: Since publication of this blog post, the executive editor of the New American Heritage Dictionary has agreed to revise the definition of to reflect the derogatory nature of the term. Read more…
Restrictionist Group Strikes Out in Latest Report on Children of Diplomats
06 months ago
BY MARGARET D. STOCK, COUNSEL TO THE FIRM, LANE POWELL PC
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) has been known for coming out with some odd reports over the years—but their latest is notable for its factual and legal flaws—and for argument that we should expand several different government bureaucracies to chase down the dozen or so children born in the U.S. each year to diplomats with immunity. The CIS report, “Birthright Citizenship for the Children of Diplomats?,” is about the one group of people that everyone agrees is exempted from birthright citizenship—the children born to foreign diplomats. It claims that, even though these people are not U.S. citizens, they are de facto citizens because they are able to receive Social Security numbers. If you look at the facts, their argument doesn’t hold water.
Let’s start by correcting the most glaring error in the report. Contrary to what CIS implies, a person is not a U.S. citizen merely because he or she possesses a Social Security number. Social Security numbers (SSNs) were first issued during the Roosevelt Administration to people who were participating in the newly-created Social Security system. At that time, citizenship or immigration status was irrelevant to the issuance of the numbers. Over the years, the requirements to obtain a SSN have tightened as the number has slowly morphed into a “de facto” national identity number—but even today, the Social Security Administration does not have the power to confer U.S. citizenship on anyone merely by issuing a number. Many non-citizens are entitled to SSNs—and a U.S. citizen is not required to have a SSN unless the citizen seeks to work for a U.S. employer, pay U.S. taxes, or apply for certain government benefits.
Even today, there are U.S. citizens who don’t have SSNs because they were born and live outside the U.S.. There are even a few U.S. citizens born inside the U.S. who don’t have SSNs because they have chosen to live “off the grid.” Their lack of a SSN does not stop them from being U.S. citizens, any more than having a SSN turns a non-citizen into a U.S. citizen. Finally, any immigration lawyer can tell you that many undocumented immigrants have SSNs, mostly because they came to the U.S. decades ago when the Social Security Administration had a practice of issuing a number to anyone who asked for one. So let’s put the myth to rest—having a SSN does not make one a U.S. citizen.
CIS recommends that the “problem”—which it identifies as the children of diplomats receiving U.S. birth certificates after they are born in the U.S.—be solved by conditioning the issuance of a U.S. birth certificate on the production of a SSN by at least one parent. Unfortunately, here again, CIS didn’t check its facts. Requiring a diplomat to produce a SSN is little barrier to the issuance of a birth certificate because diplomats can easily obtain SSNs. If diplomats in the U.S. on diplomatic visas can get SSNs, how would requiring SSNs before issuing birth certificates solve any “problem” with giving birth certificates to diplomats’ children?
CIS’s second flawed recommendation is requiring millions of people who have babies in the United States every year to declare their “profession” on their child’s birth certificate on the theory that anyone who writes “diplomat” will have her baby flagged for special scrutiny. This recommendation is based on the assumption that the children of foreign diplomats, once identified, can be readily denied citizenship simply based on a declaration of the parent’s profession. However, the 14th Amendment’s limiting language—“subject to the jurisdiction”—excludes from birthright citizenship only the small number of babies born in the U.S. to two parents who are immune to the enforcement of U.S. civil and criminal laws—not all persons who might identify themselves as diplomats. The CIS report also fails to mention that not all foreign diplomats and diplomatic staff in the U.S. have diplomatic immunity. In fact, only a small number are afforded this special status.
Yet a third whopper is the CIS report’s erroneous statement that the 14th Amendment’s limiting language has little practical effect. Although there are very few children born in the U.S. to the foreign diplomats who hold diplomatic immunity, the 14th Amendment’s language has a very serious practical effect for each of them—they cannot obtain U.S. passports—a fact that prevents them from traveling internationally as U.S. citizens. Had the report’s author checked with an immigration lawyer, he would have learned that the U.S. State Department keeps a list of diplomats who have immunity, and should one of their children apply for a U.S. passport, the State Department will deny the passport application on the grounds that the child is not a U.S. citizen. Yes, the child will have a U.S. birth certificate—but the child’s birth certificate is not proof of U.S. citizenship, merely proof that the child was born in the United States. Far from being the “super citizens” that CIS fears, these children are not U.S. citizens at all.
The CIS report dismissively notes that these children are entitled to apply for U.S. green cards and scoffs at the idea that they would apply for them, and yet such children apply for green cards regularly, which is why USCIS has instructions for them on its website. In fact, thirteen of them got green cards in Fiscal Year 2010. And along with their green cards, they can obtain U.S. SSNs. Moreover, most of them don’t want U.S. citizenship—for a child of a member of the elite corps of foreign diplomats who have immunity from U.S. law, U.S. citizenship holds significant disadvantages. For example, U.S. citizens are subject to worldwide, lifetime U.S. taxes, Selective Service laws and potential U.S. military obligations, and worldwide, lifetime U.S. civil and criminal jurisdiction, among other things.
But again, the fact that these diplomats and their children may have SSNs does not mean that they are U.S. citizens. The children of diplomats with diplomatic immunity get SSNs not because they are U.S. citizens, but because they are entitled to SSNs under the laws and regulations relating to the issuance of SSNs.
Interestingly, the CIS report makes much ado about the fact that the Social Security Administration isn’t tracking foreign diplomats and their children—but fails to mention that there is already a Congressionally-mandated government office specifically tasked with keeping track of them—the Office of Foreign Missions (OFM). Among other things, OFM gives tax-exempt cards and special driver’s licenses to those diplomats who have immunity—and arranges for them to get SSNs. OFM also helps their children apply for green cards, which is why the “problem” in the CIS report is close to non-existent. Inexplicably, however, CIS fails to mention the existence of OFM in its report, or the small number of children born in the U.S. each year to two diplomats who hold immunity.
Yet, as any immigration lawyer who has handled cases involving diplomats and their children can tell you, the 14th Amendment does indeed have a practical effect for the children of diplomats who claim immunity from U.S. laws, small as their numbers may be. These children are not birthright U.S. citizens, and the government agencies with authority to determine citizenship—the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security—do not recognize them as such.
The CIS report erroneously concludes that “Congress could require parents to have SSNs before a U.S. birth certificate or SSN is issued to a newborn. While this latter proposal might create better results and be more easily administered, it would have the effect of ending automatic birthright citizenship not just for children of diplomats, but also for children of illegal aliens and temporary aliens—an outcome that is more aligned with the intended scope of the 14th Amendment than the outcome created by current practices.” In fact, such a mandate would do no such thing—the children of SSN-lacking parents would still be U.S. citizens, because the 14th Amendment’s grant of citizenship does not depend on whether parents have a SSN. Even without SSNs or birth certificates, the children would still be Constitutional citizens—and would easily win an Equal Protection lawsuit in Federal court.
CIS’s prescription for change—that millions of parents of US-born babies be required to answer more questions and provide Social Security numbers, and that states be required to issue two different types of birth certificates—would be very expensive to administer, adding thousands of government bureaucrat jobs to the taxpayers’ burden at a time when the U.S. is facing the country’s worst budget crisis ever. Creating yet more red tape for millions of newborns is not a fiscally responsible move—and would do nothing to identify the dozen babies born in the U.S. to immunized diplomats every year, who are already tracked by the Office of Foreign Missions.
But this latest report by CIS does illustrate why it’s a bad idea for state and local governments and U.S. hospitals to get into the business of verifying the immigration and citizenship status of the parents of every child born in America—if a “think tank” like the Center for Immigration Studies can’t get the facts and law right, how can state and local governments be expected to do so?
Photo by Chad Horwedel.
Report on Birthright Citizenship Low on Facts, High on Fantasy
010 months ago
Sometimes it’s easy to miss the most outlandish and unrealistic statements made in the immigration debate given the level of dialed up rhetoric. A recent report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), however, appears to have been written to test just how far into the realm of fantasy the debate can be taken. In Birthright Citizenship for the Children of Visitors: A National Security Problem in the Making?, author W.D. Reasoner (a pseudonym) makes so many preposterous assumptions and calculations that one wonders whether the author used an alias to avoid embarrassment.
In their latest effort to scare people about the imminent threat of babies, the paper attempts to estimate the number of U.S. citizen children born to foreigners in the U.S. on temporary non-immigrant visas in one year. However their “methodology” is deeply flawed. Here’s an example of how they calculate the number of babies born to tourists:
CIS calculates the total number of women aged 18-34 who were admitted as visitors for pleasure in 2009 and arrives at 3,890,774. Determining that 20% of these women (778,154) remain in the U.S. long enough to have a child (3 months or longer), CIS “calculates what percentage of these women might in fact give birth” by looking at the “fertility of recently arrived foreign-born women.” The paper relies on U.S. census data that shows that 5% of all foreign-born women aged 18-35 who arrived within the last year reported giving birth during the year. But they then apply this 5% fertility rate to the tourist population and find that 39,000 births may be attributed to women who arrived as tourists.
They do similar calculations for other short-term non-immigrants on temporary visas and those who arrive from Canada and Mexico without I-94s and arrive at a grand total of 192,100 to 199,200 estimated births in 2009 from all foreign visitors.
Looking at recent Census data, however, we see that 2,381,000 women between 20 and 34 arrived between 2000 and 2009, or roughly 264,555 each year. Applying that 5% fertility rate to foreign-born women who arrived within one year, you get about 13,000 possible births. So CIS apparently believes that tourists and other short-term visitors have 15 times as many babies as foreign-born residents in the U.S. Really?
There are other problems as well.
Admissions vs. People. CIS’s calculations are inconsistent. For example, counting admissions is not the same as counting persons—the same person can be admitted several times in one year, and it is impossible to determine the number of unique admissions.
Fertility. Using this 5% fertility rate from the Census Bureau is highly problematic because a disproportionate share of those 5% would be legal permanent residents and other women who intend to remain in the U.S. for a longer period of time. One cannot apply the same fertility rate to tourists and other short-term residents as is used for residents who have families in the United States.
Gender. The fact that the report focuses exclusively on women either reflects some disturbing gender biases or a fundamental misunderstanding of how babies are made, or both. The insinuation seems to be that women of child bearing age cannot resist the biological impulse to have a baby, and that men (whether foreign born or U.S. born) play no role in the process.
Citizenship of Parents. CIS’s calculations ignore the fact that, while one parent may be a tourist, the other parent is more likely to be a U.S. citizen or green card holder. In other words, they are counting the children of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents among the “anchor babies.”
Piling on to a foundation of faulty methodology, the author then takes another huge leap and suggests that the U.S. citizen children of nonimmigrants are threats to national security because they “enter and reside in the United States whenever and wherever he chose, secretly harboring his hatred, an unknown sleeper agent of al Qaeda or any of the other multitude of terrorist organizations with an anti-Western bias and a violent anti-American agenda, waiting for the call to arms.”
There is absolutely no evidence that the child of a tourist or foreign student is more likely to be a terrorist than the child of a U.S. citizen. In fact, it is far more likely that U.S. citizen children of foreign visitors would serve in the military, become entrepreneurs, make important scientific discoveries, work as Congressional staff, hold public office, and otherwise contribute to the U.S.
Rather than continuing a debate that is fueled by fiction and irresponsible rhetoric, we need an honest discourse about how to create an immigration system that works for the U.S. economy and for U.S. families.
Photo by Farruska.
Some States Applying Brakes to Legislation Denying Citizenship to U.S.-Born Children
012 months ago
Yesterday, a panel in South Dakota’s legislature voted to halt legislation aimed at denying citizenship to U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants. South Dakota’s bill—and others like it—propose measures which challenge the interpretation of the 14th Amendment, which states that, with very few exceptions, all persons born in the U.S. are U.S. citizens, regardless of the immigration status of their parents. While conservative lawmakers continue to introduce bills challenging the birthright citizenship clause, other states—like Arizona and Montana—are joining South Dakota’s lead in deciding whether to move these bills forward.
South Dakota’s House Judiciary Committee voted 8 to 5 yesterday to put the brakes on HR 1199, a bill introduced by Rep. Manny Steele which calls on the Governor to join a compact with other states to issue two different types of birth certificates—one for those considered “natural-born U.S. citizens” and another singling out those whom the state does not consider a citizen. Executive Director of the State Bar of South Dakota, Tom Barnett, questioned whether the bill is constitutional while Sam Ellingson of South Dakota’s ACLU said the “U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that all children born in the U.S. are citizens regardless of their parents’ status. A state legislature cannot decide which people are citizens.”
Unfortunately, Rep. Steele didn’t come up with this all by himself. His bill is part of a concerted effort by a group called the State Legislators for Legal Immigration (SLLI) who, earlier last month, held a press conference introducing two measures challenging birthright citizenship. One measure is a state compact (upon which South Dakota’s bill is based) requiring states to issue two different birth certificates depending on the citizenship of the child’s parents and the other is a bill which defines “state citizenship” to exclude the American-born children of undocumented immigrants. SLLI members admit that they don’t expect these measures to have a practical effect, rather, they are intended to spur costly legal challenges so that the Supreme Court will take up the case and reinterpret the 14th Amendment.
Arizona Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Sen. Ron Gould, held up two such measures (SB1308 and SB1309) yesterday after three hours of testimony when it became clear the measures did not have enough votes to pass. The measures, however, can still be voted upon at a different time or assigned to a “friendlier” committee. State Sen. Kyrsten Sinema pointed out that the way these measures are currently written actually denies citizenship to children born to U.S. soliders in bases overseas, which, as Sinema continues, “would have denied our very own United States Sen. John McCain the benefits and recognition of Arizona citizenship under this law.”
Similarly, Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer said he will not sign HB 392, a measure introduced by Republican Representative James Knox which denies citizenship to dual-citizens and Native Americans, in addition to children who do not have at least one legal citizen parent. The Governor also said he would “veto any unconstitutional bills.”
Aside from the intention to waste taxpayers money, these bills do nothing to actually solve the problem of undocumented immigration. They are what Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post called bills “in search of a problem.” Hopefully, other state legislatures will call out similar attempts to amend or reinterpret the 14th Amendment for what they are—unconstitutional, wasteful and frankly, un-American.
Photo by Danielle Scott.
What Does the Vitter-Paul Resolution to Amend the Constitution Solve, Exactly?
01 year ago
Senator David Vitter (R-LA). Photo by SIR: Poseyal.
In the latest attack on the Constitution and U.S. citizenship, Senators David Vitter (R-LA) and Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced a resolution (S. J. RES. 2) last week proposing an amendment to the constitution to limit citizenship to children born in the U.S. if 1) one parent is a U.S. citizen, 2) one parent is a legal permanent resident residing in the U.S., or 3) one parent is on active duty in the U.S. military. Arizona State Rep. Kavanaugh also introduced two bills last week attempting to deny citizenship to children born in the state to undocumented immigrants and require state officials to issue distinctive looking birth certificates to those children the state does not consider citizens. While these bills might make for splashy headlines, they do nothing to end undocumented immigration. In fact, it would make life more difficult for every person in the U.S., who would then have to prove their citizenship status in order to determine the status of their newborns.
According to Sen. Vitter, constitutional citizenship is a “loophole” that must be closed:
For too long, our nation has seen an influx of illegal aliens entering our country at an escalating rate, and chain migration is a major contributor to this rapid increase – which is only compounded when the children of illegal aliens born in the U.S. are granted automatic citizenship. Closing this loophole will not prevent them from becoming citizens, but will ensure that they have to go through the same process as anyone else who wants to become an American citizen.
It’s fascinating how Sen. Vitter can get so many things wrong in one short statement. By my count, there are at least four errors in those two sentences.
First, research has shown that illegal immigration has actually decreased in recent years due to the recession and the lack of job opportunities in the U.S.
Second, so-called “chain migration” does not contribute to undocumented immigration. Immigrants are not coming to the U.S. to give birth, and children born in the U.S. cannot sponsor their parents for green cards for at least 21 years. In fact, if children born in the U.S. were denied citizenship and innocent children would be born undocumented due to no fault of their own, the undocumented population would increase.
Third, constitutional citizenship is not a “loophole,” it’s a fundamental part of the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution was altered expressly to ensure that all persons born in the U.S. would be citizens, and that no state or individual could redefine citizenship to create an underclass. Legislators ran their campaigns on the Constitution, have sworn to uphold the Constitution, have vowed to govern only within the parameters of the Constitution, and opened the 112th Congress by reading the constitution. How can they refer to the 14th Amendment as a “loophole?”
Fourth, yes, it will prevent them from becoming citizens. That’s exactly their point, isn’t it? There is no path to citizenship for the vast majority of undocumented immigrants who cannot enter the U.S. legally through either the family- or employment-based immigration system. However, it is interesting that Sen. Vitter mentions going through the same process as everyone else. What most people fail to recognize is that altering the citizenship clause would have an impact on every person born in the U.S. Every parent would have to prove their citizenship status in order to determine the status of their newborns. For some this might be easy, but for others, this could be a long, difficult, and expensive process.
The Vitter-Paul resolution, as well as the Arizona bills, are likely to get some media attention and will surely excite the extreme wing of the restrictionist movement. But a look at the facts shows that attacking birthright citizenship is not a constructive path to go down. As Jennifer Rubin wrote in the Washington Post, this is an “amendment in search of a problem.”
A One-Man Wrecking Crew: New Report Details the Costly Career of Kris Kobach
01 year ago
[fbshare]It is hardly surprising that the newly elected Kansas secretary of state, Kris Kobach, ran an election campaign which featured the baseless claim that “the illegal registration of alien voters has become pervasive” in the state. As a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) describes in detail, Kobach has built a long and varied career out of attacking immigrants; first in the Bush Administration, targeting legal immigrants from Muslim and Arab countries, and later as the architect of city ordinances and state laws targeting unauthorized, mostly Latino immigrants. Yet, while Kobach’s anti-immigrant initiatives have served to advance him politically and financially, virtually all of them have ended up being costly failures for which taxpayers ultimately foot the bill.
Since 2004, Kobach has served as senior counsel for the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI)—the legal arm of the anti-immigrant Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). From this perch, Kobach has hired himself out to city councils across the country to write, and subsequently defend from lawsuits, ordinances that target unauthorized immigrants, the businesses that employ them, and the landlords who rent to them. As the SPLC reports, Kobach’s ordinances managed to pass in Hazleton, Pennsylvania; Valley Park, Missouri; and Farmers Branch, Texas in 2006—and another passed in Fremont, Nebraska in 2008.
However, none of these ordinances has held up in court and all have been the targets of costly lawsuits. According to the SPLC, Hazleton has accrued $2.8 million in legal fees, Valley Park has $270,000, Farmers Branch $3.7 million, and Fremont $750,000—all of which will be paid using local tax dollars. Moreover, passage of the ordinances has caused race relations to deteriorate dramatically in these communities, all too frequently culminating in hate crimes directed against Latinos. Businesses that cater to Latinos have suffered as well, with many of their customers moving out of town.
Kobach also has been wreaking havoc at the state level. He has worked closely with Arizona state Senator Russell Pearce not only in the crafting of the now-infamous S.B. 1070, but also in formulating a state legislative proposal to defy the U.S. constitution and deny U.S. citizenship to the native-born children of unauthorized immigrants. Most of S.B. 1070 has been blocked by a federal judge, and the state has accumulated over $1 million in legal fees trying to defend it against lawsuits. It is likely that Kobach’s effort to re-define birthright citizenship will also be a revenue-draining failure.
Then again, short-term success is not necessarily what Kobach has in mind as he crafts his bills and ordinances. IRLI director Michael Hethmon has described the work that he and Kobach do as “field tests” to determine the legality of various anti-immigrant strategies. In other words, the residents of Arizona—and Hazleton, and Farmers Branch—are merely test subjects. As the SPLC report notes, lawmakers in a growing number of communities are resisting Kobach’s anti-immigrant sales pitch and choosing not to take part in the costly experiment that he and the IRLI are conducting. Kobach’s track record of proven failure is less than inspiring, and the economic and social costs of his failures are too high for the cash-strapped states he uses as his testing ground.
Photo by Brandon Doran.
The Emperor (and the Anti-Fourteenth Amendment Crowd) Have No Clothes
01 year ago
What a difference a few weeks can make. Just last month, the papers were filled with stories about the amazing feats of DREAM Act students, whose commitment and love for this country is boundless, even as they risk deportation in order to tell their stories. This week, the papers are filled with stories of vicious state legislators who want to turn back the clock on civil rights by stopping “an invasion of illegal aliens” through an end to birthright citizenship. Where the DREAM Act movement is about hope and opportunity, this ugly new attempt to change the Fourteenth Amendment is about hate and deprivation.
It’s tempting to look at these latest developments and conclude that the DREAM Act and all other efforts to make comprehensive immigration reform a reality are dead in the water. Obviously, fighting back against negative, punitive, anti-immigrant legislation will have to be a priority, making it more difficult to advance positive change. And the numbers in the House and Senate will make it difficult to advance good legislative policy. But it would be a mistake to count out the millions of people who have come to believe in the need for comprehensive immigration reform over the last few years.
And, frankly, the bold new moves by immigration restrictionists are likely to backfire precisely because they are so bold. When proposals to end birthright citizenship, which have long circulated in the House of Representatives, were easily dismissed as fringe elements of the anti-immigration movement, no one paid much attention to the implications. But when national leaders—starting with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and his “dropping babies” comments earlier this year—began calling for a roll back to the Fourteenth Amendment, they unleashed a torrent of right-wing, anti-immigrant sentiment that has made an awful lot of people stand up and take notice.
Elected officials who propose tinkering with the Constitution as a way to end illegal immigration have shown their hand. They would happily undermine decades of civil rights legislation in order to change our immigration policies, which kind of makes you wonder if this is about immigration at all. Civil rights leaders, many of whom long ago recognized the links between immigration policy and civil rights, have been blunt and unsparing in their critique of these proposals.
Americans for Constitutional Citizenship, a new civil and human rights group formed to counter the hatred embedded in these new state initiatives to end birthright citizenship, called Rep. Steve King’s (R-IA) recent efforts futile and divisive in a recent statement:
Instead of debating the substantive issues at stake for our country, Rep. King has put forth a divisive and futile piece of paper that has no place being considered in the U.S. Congress. Even more disturbing is that on the same day that the House of Representatives was honoring the dignity of our Constitution by reading it on the floor, Rep. King was busy undermining it for political grandstanding. We will continue to stand for American values and oppose these frivolous political attacks on the core principles of our great democracy.
If there was ever a doubt that people were using immigrants as a scapegoat for our nation’s ills, the audacity of the anti-Fourteenth Amendment crowd has put this to rest forever. And if you think people were energized to work for immigration reform as a consequence of DREAM Act, just wait and see what happens as more and more Americans realize that immigration affects every single one of us. These attempts to roll back the Constitution are part of the bandwagon of bad ideas that have emerged in the face of a broken immigration system. As the anti-immigrant proposals become bolder and more ridiculous, more and more people will reject them and will see that the Emperor—or in this case, the State Legislator—have no clothes.
Photo by iwcblogger.
Legislators Intend to Burden States with Costly Immigration Litigation
01 year ago
State Legislators for Legal Immigration member, State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R-PA)
Yesterday, a group of state legislators gathered in a small room in Washington, D.C. to present their plan for reinterpreting the 14th Amendment—the amendment which states that all persons born in the U.S., and subject to jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of U.S. and the states in which they reside. Although the legislators proclaimed a desire to “protect the states” and to “love” the 14th Amendment, which was adopted after the Civil War to guarantee citizenship to the American-born children of freed slaves, you wouldn’t know it listening by to their blatant disregard for the American taxpayer—upon whom they plan on sticking costly litigation fees. Chairman of the House Immigration Subcommittee, Congressman Steve King (R-IA), also introduced a bill in the new Congress to end constitution citizenship.
A group of state legislators, State Legislators for Legal Immigration, presented two measures intended to prevent the American-born children of undocumented immigrants from automatically becoming citizens—a state compact requiring states to issue two different types of birth certificates (one for those considered “natural-born U.S. citizens” and another singling out those whom the state does not consider a citizen) and a bill defining “state citizenship” which excludes the American-born children of undocumented immigrants.
Yet, as the New York Times reports, the legislation isn’t intended to have a “practical effect” any time soon. The legislators, who plan on introducing the measures in 14 states, admit that these measures are intended to spur costly legal challenges so that the Supreme Court will take up the case and issue a decision—which is exactly what is so irritating about their claim to “protect the states.” Who’s protecting their states from costly litigation fees?
As we’ve reported before, cities and states that have already attempted to pass restrictive immigration legislation are still paying the price. Hazleton, Pennsylvania, currently faces $2.4 million in legal fees; Farmers Branch, Texas, has already spent about $3.2 million to defend itself since September 2006; Fremont, Nebraska estimates the annual cost of defending their immigration ordinance to be about $750,000. And in Arizona, where their immigration law SB1070 was challenged by the DOJ, residents must be feeling the economic consequences of the tourism boycott, which the Center for American Progress estimates in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Is this really the job of state legislators? Or should they, instead, be working on ways to bring additional revenue into the state, like state Rep. Luz Robles of Utah who introduced an immigration bill that provides undocumented immigrants already here a legal avenue to work, which would in turn generate additional tax revenue for the state? With many states facing a budget deficit, many are urging their state lawmakers to prioritize jobs and economic growth.
And besides, as Lucas Guttentag of the ACLU points out, “no amount of legislative grandstanding can change what the Constitution says and requires. It’s hard to imagine a more anti-American proposal than one that would judge a person or baby by the status of their grandparents or great grandparents [...] That is not America. That is not permitted under the Constitution. That is not what has made this country great.”
Photo by PA State Representative Daryl Metcalfe.
State Legislators Attempt to Turn Back Clock to Antebellum South
01 year ago
At a press conference this morning at the National Press Club, a coalition of state legislators and immigration restrictionists known as the State Legislators for Legal Immigration (SLLI) presented their proposal to turn back the clocks to the pre-Civil War era to create a new definition of “state citizenship,” create a new second-class citizenship, and fundamentally alter the principles of the U.S. Constitution. With connections to restrictionist group FAIR and the notorious John Tanton Network, SLLI members Rep. John Kavanaugh of Arizona, Rep. Daryl Metcalfe of Pennsylvania, Kansas Secretary of State-elect Kris Kobach and others were on hand to monger more fear on “the illegal alien invasion” and, in the words of South Carolina’s state Senator Danny Verdin, cure the “malady” and “poison” of undocumented immigration.
In a radio interview on Tuesday, Rep. Kavanaugh of Arizona claimed that this proposal is “nothing dramatic or over the top,” but rather a “reasoned, rational approach” intended to trigger a legal review of the 14th Amendment. Rep. Metcalfe claims that this effort is needed to “correct the monumental misapplication of the 14th amendment.” Like Swift’s modest proposal, this proposal is far from reasoned and rational. It is an attempt to rewrite the Constitution and to assert state laws to strip some native-born U.S. citizens of their rights, punish innocent newborns for the actions of their parents, and otherwise trample upon the fundamental principles the U.S. is based on.
The 14th amendment clearly states that all persons born in the U.S., and subject to jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of U.S. and the states in which they reside. The model legislation attempts to revive a definition of “state citizenship” and narrow the categories of people who would be citizens of the state at birth by reinterpreting the “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” clause to include only those who “owe no allegiance to any foreign sovereignty.” Under their definition, only children born to at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen, national, or legal permanent resident would be considered citizens.
Walter Dellinger, former Assistant Attorney General and a member of a coalition called Americans for Constitutional Citizenship, stated:
The Supreme Court in 1898 made it absolutely clear that birth in U.S. guarantees a right to citizenship and the court has never looked back on it. We have understood the 14th amendment to mean that all persons born in U.S., and subject to jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of U.S. and the states in which they reside so that we have no doubt of citizenships and so that no judges, legislators or bureaucrats can decide who is and who is not a citizen of the U.S. This rule has worked for us since the Civil War for a good reason—so that we never have any doubt that people born here are citizens.
As if the legal questions raised by the first part of the proposal weren’t enough, the bill would also create a “state compact” requiring states to issue two different types of birth certificates: one for those considered “natural-born U.S. citizens” and another singling out those whom the state does not consider a citizen. This creates a situation in which state and hospital officials responsible for issuing birth certificates would be empowered to make life-altering decisions regarding the citizenship of a child and the immigration status of the parents.
Their audacity and shamelessness is noteworthy. Rep. Kavanagh and the other legislators have openly stated that their plan is to set up a showdown between state and federal power, to spark a legal challenge that will end up in the Supreme Court. They admit that the legislation itself is a means to an end; it would not have any immediate implications for the states that pass it. In this sense, they are simply using their own states and constituents as staging grounds for their ultimate battle. While the legislation may never be implemented, state taxpayers are going to have to foot the bill for costly litigation to defend the law and the crazy aspirations of its proponents. Arizonans in particular should understand the costs of a tarnished reputation.
It is clear that this is not a legitimate attempt to pose a Constitutional question. The ugliness and viciousness of the language invoked throughout today’s press conference signal the true intentions of the legislators.
Photo by andrew dowsett.