I think illegal immigration is one of the biggest issues facing us. Billions of dollars are being used to house, provide assistance to, and provide medical assistance for those who have, for whatever reason come across our borders illegally on a yearly basis. There is much debate over how we take care of them - if we take care of them. The Presidential debates are inundated with questions about how we deal with this problem. When Congress isn't dealing with a sham impeachment, much of their time is spent on potential solutions to this issue.
I am only talking about one aspect of the problem today: Anchor babies. I know the term "anchor babies" is very argumentative, but it fits, since many will come here to have their babies hoping to be tied to the fate of these newly born babies. The way the US Constitution is currently interpreted, the babies are citizens and thus should be protected, while the parents aren't.
Some debate is beginning on whether these children should be considered citizens or not. Most of this debate centers around the interpretation of the 14th Amendment. It indicated "...all persons born or naturalized..." are citizens. It referred to slaves at the conclusion of the Civil War and transferred all rights to those persons who were previously only considered 3/5 of a person. But should persons born on US soil to individuals not legally here be considered citizens? I say, absolutely! They were born here on US soil - this has been the basic understanding for over 100 years. We treat them as full-blooded citizens. I have no problems with the current interpretation. However, Mom and Dad are not citizens; they're not here legally, and should not be afforded any rights heretofore provided to US Citizens.
What to do; what to do? Here's my suggestion: Take the US Citizen children and place them in Foster-Care with US Citizen care-takers. Terminate the parental rights of those who have proven they have no regard for the safety of their children or for US or International Law. This then gives the Foster Parents the right to immediately begin adoption proceedings, should they desire to do so. This puts the US citizen children in US citizen homes with US citizen families.
Then send the criminal (both US law and International Law) biological parents packing back to their own countries via deportation. This would ensure that US citizens are taken care of, while not flooding our already over-utilized assistance programs with undocumented abusers. This would also cause an almost immediate cessation to people flooding across our borders to have their "anchor babies", since they would be forever separated from their children and these babies would no longer provide the achor the parents were hoping for.
Now, I know this solution will likely never be implemented. However, it will hopefully provide for interesting dialogue. Feel free to share to get the conversation started. Don't forget to subscribe for future Echo Debrief content.
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