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Georgia Congressman jump starts the immigration debate
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Congressman Nathan Deal, who’s running on the Republican ticket for Governor of Georgia, has called for a change to the 14th Amendment known as “birth right citizenship” which grants an automatic citizenship to any child born in United States.
The 14th Amendment was ratified on July 9, 1868 to protect the rights of freed slaves:
“ All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” source
Deal argues that the lawmakers never meant for this Amendment to help illegal immigrants stay in America.
The immigration laws are often difficult to enforce when dealing with people who have raised families on U.S. soil, but they never established a legal status. The authorities are frequently placed in a morally troubled position when they have to deport a breadwinner of a large family where he or she is the only one with an illegal immigration status. The issue becomes even more pronounced when both parents are in U.S. illegally, but their children are citizens. A lot of immigration agencies and human rights groups called the separation of families inhumane and un-American as well as bad for the economy; if a large family loses their only breadwinner they all end up on welfare.
Representative Deal and his supporters propose that a child born in U.S. should be granted a citizenship only if at least one parent is a citizen, legal permanent resident (legal immigrant), or serving in U.S. military.
The proponents of the bill maintain that this provision would stop women from using their children as a “meal ticket” (the child as a U.S. citizen qualifies for welfare) and later as a way to establish a legal status – once 21 years old, the child can sponsor and apply for their parents’ citizenship.
The opponents of the proposal claim that this bill is not consistent with the American spirit of welcoming people who seek a better life - including an innocent child who has no control over their parents behavior. They point out that the truly needy don’t have money for lawyers to establish legal status through legal pathways, which can often take years, if not decades. Most of them, because of their low social status, lack of education and money can’t even get into United States on a simple visa.
“Lisa Navarrete, vice president of the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group, said the proposed law wouldn’t stem illegal immigration and would make the problem worse because not only would illegal immigrants be undocumented, their American-born children would be too. ‘The worst part of it is you end up with potentially millions of children who are stateless, who were born here and have no ties to any other country, yet they’re not considered citizens or part of the United States,’she said.” source
United States is one of a very few countries that still grant birthright citizenship, some of them are: Argentina, Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Pakistan, and Venezuela. Most of the wealthy industrialized powers banned it because of security concerns; Ireland was the last country in the European Union to ban it in 2004.
Deal has first proposed this legislation on April 19th, 2007 with little success. At this point, considering the political environment in U.S. Congress where Republicans are a shrinking minority, this bill has little potential of being seriously considered. It does, however, score Rep. Deal some brownie points with the conservative base in the light of his gubernatorial campaign.
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