Thursday, August 05, 2010

Reconsidering the 14th Amendment

Top Republicans are making the case that Congress should repeal the 14th Amendment. This is a new strategy in the fight over immigration since repealing the 14th Amendment and ending birthright citizenship would bring an end to "anchor babies."

This seems to be anther case where the Republican "right to life" begins at conception and ends at birth.

See here and here.

2 comments:

M said...

So presumably children born to legal immigrants would be citizens?

I must admit that on some level I do understand the logic; take away the "incentive," and people will stop the behavior. That said, it reinforces something that our good friend South Paw said often: Republicans care about babies before they are born, but not after they are born. It seems, however, in the case of illegal immigrants, Republicans don't care about babies at all.

solon said...

I am not sure that if changing birthright citizenship you change the behavior. It may mean that if illegal immigrants have children, then those children will not be US citizens.

However, I do not think that this will stop prevent illegal immigrants from trying to get in to the US. In order to do that, there would be to be a major changes to the Mexican economy, as well as the social and political structure.

People may not want to have babies when they are here. However, they do want a better life.