As a naturalized U.S. citizen, I am grateful for the process that I followed to obtain my citizenship. It required me to be a legal immigrant, wait five years, take a couple of courses, pass a test, and finally fulfill my goal. It was a great moment when I took the oath and got my certificate.
Over the last few years, we’ve seen an emphasis on something called “birthright citizenship,” and I don’t like it.
It also encourages fraud, as we see in this post by Hans A. von Spakovsky:
Under birthright citizenship, any child born in the U.S. is automatically an American citizen at birth — even if the child’s parent or parents are here illegally.A recent federal indictment of 19 individuals on immigration fraud charges shows that a whole industry has grown up to bring pregnant women from other countries to the U.S. so their children can be born as American citizens. The 19 indicted people were charged with operating or participating in “birth tourism” agencies.According the U.S. Justice Department — which took action for the first time to break up three such agencies — the three operations in Southern California made millions of dollars bringing thousands of Chinese women to the U.S. for the sole purpose of securing birthright citizenship for their children.
In other words, this is a racket, whether we are talking about someone flown in or a woman who walks into El Paso to have a baby.
I don’t care where the woman is from. This is not about race or ethnic origin. This is about insulting those of us who did it the right way.
So how do we fix the problem?
I don’t know if we need a Supreme Court decision to clarify the 14th amendment, specially since the original text had nothing to do with illegal immigration.
Perhaps we need a law from Congress.
One way or another, I am insulted that someone can come to the U.S. and get what it took me years, and a lot of hard work, to get.
P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.
