AZ, ur doing it rong

[cellio]

On the heels of passing legislation to place local police officers between a rock and a hard place, Arizona is now proposing (state) legislation to deny citizenship to people born of illegals. I say this from the bottom of my law-respecting soul: Arizona, WTF?

Now I am clearly in a minority among my friends; I don't believe that we should just turn a blind eye to law-breaking. Illegals shouldn't get "amnesty" just because they're already here; even if we are going to set aside their past crimes, at the very least the ones who came here of their own free will should go to the back of the line, behind everyone who's following the process, and it's not wrong to make them wait at home. Impractical, maybe, but not wrong. (Also impractical is any large-scale hunt for them; catch them where you find them and by all means look at large, suspect employers, but leave it at that.) I have sympathy for people who came here illegally in their parents' arms, and I don't know what to do about that.

And I believe that if a police officer who stops you for a traffic violation can give you a ticket for not wearing a seatbelt, a local misdemeanor, then how much the moreso should it be perfectly legal to check for felony-level violations of federal law. And I also believe that "anchor babies" born to illegals should not confer citizenship, though they are unambiguously citizens themselves per the Constitution.

But. Arizona, you're gone off the deep end and you're making it harder for your law-respecting allies to hold any traction in this debate. Stop it. You're giving ammo to the other side.

Certain things are the domain of federal law, and you should butt out. Don't make your local police officers, who often have to rely on the good will of communities they work in, into the enemy. And for heaven's sake, what on earth possessed you to go up against the US Constitution? That can only end badly. (You should maybe try reading it sometime.) If Congress passes legislation granting automatic citizenship to illegals who come here to have their kids, those us us who have a problem with that will hold you directly responsible.

The immigration reform I want to see goes something like this:

• Eliminate quotas. Anyone who wants to come here legally is welcome and a path to citizenship should exist as it does now. Entry should be expedited for anyone with a credible need for asylum.
• (Edit based on comments:) Streamline and simplify the application process.
• Government-funded support is only for citizens. We can't afford, nor should we be on the hook, to support all the world's needy.
• Punish those who employ illegals along with the illegals. If this means that consumer prices go up because the people "who will do the dirty jobs Americans won't do" are replaced by others at a higher price, I really don't have a problem with that. I'd rather not be part of a system of exploitation and I realize that's not free.
• Citizen children should be treated the same way they would be if, instead of being deported, mom and dad were doing jail time for a different crime. We don't forgive armed robbery or murder just because there are kids; why should we do something different in this case? (The children can always leave with the parents, of course. Many things in life are not fair; parents' bad decisions, and just plain dumb luck, can have effects on kids. And these wouldn't be the first kids who are uprooted from their friends and community because the parents have to move.)

Arizona, I think we agree on most of this (maybe not the first point). How about channeling some of your furor toward Congress to work on this constructively? Please stop making things worse.

Comments

[siderea]

The problem is that I don't see it as a state matter. AZ can decide who's an AZ citizen (whatever that means), but the federal government owns decisions about who is a US citizen.

Ahhhh! OK, that makes more sense.

Rather than attacking the child's citizenship I prefer to first attack "family unification", saying that having a child here does not help you one whit. That seems far less damaging and has a good-enough chance of helping that we should try it.

I think... that is because you don't know much about child protective services. Even just considering the economics of the thing. Taking a child from parents who are providing from her and making her a ward of the state is horrendously expensive. The state winds up having to pay people to do what her parents were doing for free. If she's not the right color, young enough, and free enough of medical issues to be rapidly adopted, the state's going to get stuck with the bill for 18 years (plus possibly college tuition).

I mean, even if one thought taking infants from their parents wasn't a bad thing for the infant... one does have to confront the bottom line. There's a reason these folks in AZ aren't so hot to throw the parents out and keep the kids: the last thing they want is Another Mouth To Feed, times several thousand.

[cellio]

Families can be united on either side of a border; why does it have to be this one? If there is no relative available who can care for the children (or perhaps even if there is; that's up to the family or social worker), I would send them home with the parents. No, it's not fair to the child, who did nothing wrong and is now going to be uprooted from his friends, school, etc, but it seems to be the same class of unfairness that applies routinely when a family moves for a job, to be near the elderly grandparents, etc.

[alienor.livejournal.com]

You're suggesting that we deport an American citizen who did nothing wrong?

[cellio]

If that citizen is six years old and would otherwise become a ward of the state, yes -- it's less bad than the alternatives. In particular, it is less bad than the alternative where we automatically grant a green card or citizenship if you come here and have a child -- which creates an incentive to have unwanted and unsupportable children. (Note: I am not saying that all "anchor babies" are unwanted, unloved, uncared-for, etc; I am saying that such a policy creates an unhealthy incentive.)

If the family feels that the child would be better off staying here with someone else in the US, that's cool too. But if family unification is the goal, that can be accomplished by having the child leave with the parents to the child's other country of citizenship. The child, being a US citizen, is of course free to return when able. The parents are free to begin the application process to come here legally.