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Steve King: "Birthright Citizenship" Bill Could be Soon - Political Hotsheet - CBS News

Well.. more like "modify" I guess. The basic premise is that babies born from illegal immigrant would not be count as citizen.

I wonder if it is retroactive. (of course it won't be, can you imagine the logistic nightmare?)

I understand his logic. I don't necessarily agree with him, but I understand his motivations. Still, none of this matters. I doubt the bill would pass the Senate or get signed into law, and if it did the Supreme Court would probably strike it down.

It'll never happen. And if it starts getting close I'll even go so far as to get involved against it.

That would take an Amendment to the Constitution for that to pass. As the the current laws hold, the baby can come back to America at 18 to be a citizen then 10 years later the parents can come to the US for a speedy process to become a citizen.

Chibibar said:

I wonder if it is retroactive. (of course it won't be, can you imagine the logistic nightmare?)

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Yes, yes I can. See Canada, right friggin now!

Lost Canadians: Welcome to the Lost Canadians Website

Personally, having lived so near the border of Mexico for so many years, I would like to see it happen. The only change is to add a "grandfathered" clause to anyone that was born prior to the law.

Personally I can't wait for citizens to be defined as white landowners again.

I don't think it has to do with race, but becoming a citizen, because someone managed to jump the border and give birth here just doesn't seem right.

I don't mean any disrespect at all, I was raised Hispanic by a very loving Hispanic family. I love all my relatives but if your parents didn't live here....

I'm still mystified about the reluctance to let people become citizens. What is so harmful about having someone appear and granting their request for citizenship? Is it merely an issue of them increasing the poverty burden, or is there some moral imperative that suggests this would harm our country in more sinister ways?

Has nothing to do with poverty burden I don't think, as I've known many illegal aliens that get government assistance.

It's a matter of benefits and entitlements, which off the top of my head I can't exactly remember. I mean, I'm all for the parents becoming citizens and therefore the children are by association.

It mystifies me too. I'm all for a reduction of fees/paperwork/wait time and keeping the 14th the way it is.

I think some people are just scared they'll have to actually compete for jobs if we start allowing people in.

Yeah, have you seen the jobs that these people get?

No person who's complaining about this law, works those kinds of positions.

I'm just against redefining who is and is not a citizen. First it's the children of illegal immigrants, next it's legal immigrants applying for citizenship but are denied because they[STRIKE]are Muslim[/STRIKE] "have ties to terrorists". Then Korean and Chinese immigrants 'cause they're looking a little red, if you know what I mean, comrade.

Noone is saying the system is perfect, the issue at hand isn't the problem with that system, but whether or not the current law should be amended.

Jiarn said:

Yeah, have you seen the jobs that these people get?

No person who's complaining about this law, works those kinds of positions.

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Yes I have. Unskilled laborers complain about it all the time.

I guess they're taking their joooorrrrbs.

The day before yesterday it was the Irish.
Yesterday it was the East European Jews.
Today it's Latinos.
Tomorrow, the Monegasque?

sixpackshaker said:

That would take an Amendment to the Constitution for that to pass. As the the current laws hold, the baby can come back to America at 18 to be a citizen then 10 years later the parents can come to the US for a speedy process to become a citizen.

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Wait, so it takes 30 years for that process to "pay off"?

I was already inclined to not be remotely concerned, but if that's the case, this just seems like GOP-base-pandering about a complete non-issue.

SpecialKO;454874][QUOTE=sixpackshaker said:

That would take an Amendment to the Constitution for that to pass. As the the current laws hold, the baby can come back to America at 18 to be a citizen then 10 years later the parents can come to the US for a speedy process to become a citizen.

Click to expand...

Wait, so it takes 30 years for that process to "pay off"?

I was already inclined to not be remotely concerned, but if that's the case, this just seems like GOP-base-pandering about a complete non-issue.[/QUOTE]

It actually pays off a lot sooner as long as the parents don't get caught being in the US illegally, as they can usually get temporary visas or work permits to stay in the US with their child. They aren't citizens, but they aren't back home ether. It's one of the reasons the US gets so much Birth Tourism.

Anchor Babies,
They'll make our dreams come true!

Anchor Babies,
They'll do the same for you!

Jiarn said:

I guess they're taking their joooorrrrbs.

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Heh, yeah.

Dammit, you lapine divinity, you broke our song!

Not a huge fan of this idea. Once one starts reinterpreting the rights of citizenship for one group, it sets a precedent to reinterpret it for others. The law is the one and only place I buy the slippery slope argument, as future legal decisions look to the past as a guide.

Have you SEEN the river you need to swim through to get over here? Hell that's a trial worth citizenship if I ever saw one.

Shegokigo said:

Have you SEEN the river you need to swim through to get over here? Hell that's a trial worth citizenship if I ever saw one.

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Yeah, it's pretty rough.

Yeah, try adding about 20mph more of speed, 20ft more of depth, a few dead bodies, debris, and about 100yrds more of width.

On the Mexican border anyway. Unless that's the Canadian river crossing....

It's also polluted as shit.

I agree that the river crossing is one hell of a trip, but greater than half of all crossings occur along the rest of the border. Specifically, the Tucson sector has over half all apprehensions. That trip is really different, mostly the freezing to death.

Meh, the Rio Grande is almost dry at this point.

I am a huge supporter of opening our borders. Primarily to those that have valuable skills/education, but all are welcome. Our immigration policy is flat out stupid in some places and poorly thought out in others.

Stupid - I know a number of foreign born PhD engineers and scientists who have had a lot of trouble getting citizenship. If you have a job that will sponsor you its not incredibly hard, but a lot of companies don't want to jump through the hoops to sponsor these people. This is apallingly stupid. Anyone who has a highly skilled education and can speak english reasonably well should be fast tracked to citizenship within a year. We NEED these people, we don't want them going back to their countries. We are the borg, we will assimilate you.

Poorly Thought Out - We want low-skilled/manual laborers. Right now we are outsourcing lots of jobs to other countries, its an unavoidable reality of the many countries that have rebuilt after the last century of wars, and the onset of capitalism in others. Luckily Europe is doing a good job of annhilating its own economy so we won't have to worry about competition with them for too long, but India, China, the Middle East and large parts of South America are going to become serious competitors with us in both manufacturing and the technical services industry.

We should be able to stay ahead in the technical services due to our university system, but a lot of people look at manufacturing as a lost cause. However, if we have a relatively open immigration policy we can increase the amount of people willing to do manufacturing in this country for low pay (which is the only way it will work), increase the amount of people buying all the stuff we manufacture, and create a labor drain in the other countries.

TLDR? Immigration is almost always a good thing in this country. This doesn't necessarrily apply to all countries. Europe has definite immigration problems but a lot of that stems from their over-the-top socialist policies, but in America, immigration is good.

Historically some of the largest immigration booms were followed/used in some of the most important periods of american history

Around the 1850's the Know Nothing's started talking about the dangers of all of the immigrants we were getting and tried to rally people to stop it. In the civil war, 25% of the Union Army were immigrants. Thank god the Know Nothings failed.

The Chinese built the American railroad system, of course right after that the Chinese Exclusion act completely stopped their immigration. Thank goodness we kept those yellow devils from building any more of our infrastructure. We clearly did something right there.

In the early 20th century there was a massive boom in immigration which was largely responsible for the Gilded Age industrialization of the United States. My bet is that we would have been much better off slowing down our industrialization, we would have been right on track for being competitive in WWII, and having a workforce capable of throwing us to the front of the pack right afterwards.

In a lot of those cases above, its pretty obvious that the immigrants were mistreated when they first arrived, and I'm not saying we should do the same. However, there are many many immigrants that would jump at the chance to come over here and work 2 jobs for minimum wage if they got citizenship, which wouldn't technically be mistreating them (I mean....it is a legal wage.)

So its not really mistreating, more that the first gen has lower standards of living which we can exploit for a cheaper manufacturing labor pool. After the first generation, we will start seeing more and more kids becoming technically skilled which then adds to our technical services labor pool.

And you want to know who complains about this line of thinking the most?

People that refuse to advance themselves from the manufacturing labor pool to the technical services pool. People who are, in fact, kind of a drain on our economy as they demand excessive wages for manufacturing jobs. So instead, we don't get the cheap labor and we send the work overseas.

By opening the borders we create the potential for an alternative to outsourcing, Insourcing. We import the cheap labor and do the manufacturing here. They will be naturalized and not mistreated, but will work a factory job building cars for 10$ an hour, and won't jump into some self-destructive union.

So that's my view. I am super pro-immigration, although its for reasons many of yall may find incredibly callous. I make no apologies for that. Many mexican's would be thrilled at the oppurtunity to do those manufacturing jobs in America for far far less than what we currently pay. That's not wrong to do, as what we currently pay is severely outvalued. And yeah, this would put a number of american laborers out of work (or at least cut their pay), but as far as I can tell that's going to happen anyways. I'm sure those people looking for work in Detroit are happy that they never took a pay cut.

but but... what about those labor union for that manufacturing?? huh?

edit: I believe you are right. People don't want to advance themselves and are "happy" where they are and don't want competitions.

To me, if they are citizens, they need to get Social Security and actually pay taxes to the country they live in (some already do but not citizens and some don't) That means more tax dollars into the system and support stuff like health care. Isn't one of the "biggies" that cause bloated healthcare is treating everyone and no one is footing the bill?

If they (the general they not anyone specific) are register in the system, then they will also fall under the new healthcare rules etc etc.

Well, realistically if they are making 10$ an hour they won't be paying any taxes as they would be at or below the poverty line. But the companies hiring them would be paying some payroll taxes. Really the important thing is that they would be a cheap labor pool, the companies using them would be paying the significant taxes for the profits they make off the products they are manufacturing. We may need to cut some industry taxes for manufacturing as well, but that's just wild speculation.

With regards to the healthcare stuff, undocumented immigrants make up a very small part of the people that go to hospitals and don't pay for stuff. I think the number was like 10% or something. Main reason is they are afraid of getting reported/deported.

I designed an immigration policy based on Subway commercials. Every time people want to cross, $5. That's it. I think it would do a lot for the whole issue.

America is all set to literally mimic Starship Troopers

Still a possible improvement, at any rate.

Also because it hasn't been posted here yet: The great immigration chart