Posted on 10/28/2011 10:16:18 AM PDT by Steelfish
Born In The U.S.A.: Birth Tourists Get Instant U.S. Citizenship For Their Newborns Oct 28, 2011
By Anna Schecter
A curious global industry has emerged that caters to wealthy foreign women willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars to give birth in the United States and get instant U.S. citizenship for their babies. The hefty price is worth it, according to these women, because it paves the way for easy access to American public schools, universities and jobs as the children get older and green cards for the whole family once the child turns 21.
The women stay at controversial birth tourism centers, often hidden in suburbia. The centers have riled neighbors and ignited outrage on Capitol Hill.
“They are gaming the system…and people should be put in jail,” said Representative Phil Gingrey (R-Ga), one of several members of Congress trying to put an end to birth tourism.
The United States is the only country in the developed world other than Canada that grants jus soli or birthright citizenship. The U.S. law dates back to the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, ratified after the Civil War to ensure that all freed slaves and their children would be American citizens.
NBC News gained access to four birth tourism centers in the New York City borough of Queens. The owners, all women, said they know their industry is controversial, but they hope it will soon be recognized and supported by the U.S. government.
“Yes, our business is a sensitive topic, but we have a lot to offer the American culture and economy,” said Katie, a business owner who asked that her last name not be used.
“These women are the economic elite…and they are fueling the economy here. I
(Excerpt) Read more at rockcenter.msnbc.msn.com ...
Demand the resignation of Hillary Clinton!
Read the whole story. It is appalling!
300,000 to 400,000 anchor babies are born each year in this country. Birthright citizenship is the current law of the land and has been for a very long time. We need to change the law or the Constitution, whichever works.
Amazingly, we have a large number of FReepers who think it’s fine and dandy for these babies to grow up and become president someday.
Laws clarifying this issue are needed immediately. This citizenship at birth of children of illegals and non resdient foreigners must stop.
Speaking of people who should be put in jail; Start with Obama.
The graduate housing at my College is full of Chinese girls having babies.
The 14th Amendment
This is a transcript of the Dr. John C. Eastman video presentation on the 14th Amendment and birthright citizenship. Dr. Eastman is Dean of Chapman University’s School of Law. He is also Director for the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence at The Claremont Institute. As an expert in constitutional law, Dr. Eastman has testified before Congress on the issue of the Fourteenth Amendment, anchor babies, and birthright citizenship.
You can also view the Eastman video on the CAPS website.
Hello, my name is John Eastman. I’m the Dean of Chapman University School of Law. I’d like to share with you today a few thoughts about birthright citizenship.
You know, many people today think if you’re just born on U.S. soil that makes you a citizen, but that’s not quite what our Constitution says. It says all persons born or naturalized in the United States (that’s the born on the soil part) and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens.
And it’s that “subject to the jurisdiction” clause that most people overlook. It means that you’re owing allegiance to this country; that you’ve become part of our system of government. You recognize the importance of the rule of law and consent of the governed.
And the children of people who are here just temporarily, whether legally or illegally, don’t meet that requirement for mandatory and automatic citizenship. You have lots of people here legally for example who are visiting from other countries just as tourists. You have people who come here as students on student visas.
Their children born on U.S. soil, that doesn’t mean that they are also subject to the jurisdiction of the United States in this broader owing- allegiance sense. Of course they have to comply with our laws while they’re here, but they’re not “subject to the jurisdiction” in the sense that the 14th Amendment intended.
And of course people who are here illegally, whether they’ve overstayed their visa or come here without a visa/without legal permission at all, have never become subject to the jurisdiction in this broader sense. And therefore, mandatory automatic citizenship just simply doesn’t apply to their children as a matter of constitutional law.
So the real question for us is what remedies can we have to get back to this original understanding of birthright citizenship?
Well, some people say we should have a constitutional amendment. Of course that’s a little bit redundant. If my understanding of the Constitution is correct, all we need is to remind people what the Constitution actually says. It wouldn’t need an amendment.
So the route I actually prefer is for members of Congress to pass a statute defining what their understanding of the Constitution’s mandatory automatic citizenship requirement is; extending additional citizenship offers to beyond that as they think is important for policy reasons, and then giving a bit of fast track to the courts to decide whether that act of Congress is correct or not.
A third mechanism would be if some city, someplace in the country, decided not to recognize the citizenship of children born to parents who are here illegally. And I believe the cities could do that. Of course it would probably provoke a legal challenge fairly quickly, and then we could try that case in the federal courts, the district court, the courts of appeals, and ultimately the Supreme Court weighing in on whether that litigation or that statute or ordinance of the local city is consistent with the birthright citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment.
You know some people may ask, “Why bother? We’ve had birthright citizenship as an understanding, even if it’s erroneous, for about a half a century. Why bother going back and trying to recapture the original understanding?”
Well, there are a couple of reasons. There are between 12 and 20 million illegal immigrants in this country right now. One of the draws for them to come here has been this erroneous notion of birthright citizenship, and that’s created huge problems. The problems at the southern border with coyotes and the way people are treated are legion.
There’s a whole industry in Los Angeles called birth tourism, where people come to this country specifically for the purpose of giving birth to children on U.S. soil. And that has made them all too frequently the prey of some of the most heinous kinds of human trafficking of people in the world in our history.
We shouldn’t tolerate that ever and to the extent our policies are encouraging that or inducing people to do that; those policies need to be revisited very quickly.
But there’s an even more important issue. One of the reasons the founders of our Constitution gave the power to Congress to decide how much immigration to have at any given time was because they understood how important it is in a government like ours, which is an experiment in self- government, that people come here in numbers that don’t overwhelm those that are used to governing themselves.
When you have whole groups of people come all at once from countries that are tyrannical; where they’ve learned to live in despotism, they come here without an appreciation of the rule of law or the capacity for self-government. And to the extent those numbers are huge, they could overwhelm our institutions and threaten this experiment in self government that has served us so well for over two centuries now.
So what can you do to help with this effort to recover the original understanding of the Constitution and its citizenship clause?
Well, one thing you can do is contact your member of Congress. Let him or her know that you’ve read the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause and you recognize that it’s not just birth on U.S. soil alone but “subject to the jurisdiction” is also required for this automatic citizenship. And that means more than just subject to the traffic laws of our country. It means owing allegiance to our country; being part of our body politic and our system of government.
Illegal immigrants just don’t meet that criteria. They don’t owe that allegiance to our country. In fact, they owe allegiance to a foreign sovereign.
So let your member of Congress know that you’ve read those clauses. Urge them to read them as well, and urge them to get behind and support legislation that would help clarify what our Constitution actually requires on birthright citizenship. And you can do that today!
At this stage, the clarification would probably include a free tuition ,$100k gubmint bond and box of free cheese.
(and lifetime of free diapers if born in CT)
Can’t this be stopped with an “executive order” from a President? (it seems like everything else can be done with one)
The path to future Amerikan Muslim Jihadis.
We don’t need to change anything, we just need to actually follow it
“subject to the jurisdiction” as it is for immigrants who have to renounce any & all foreign allegiances, one citizenship either at the time of naturalization or birth. PERIOD! That is what the 14th Amendments says!
Yes: Then there will be challenge to the Courts. We need to have a solid conservative majority and not have to depend on the whims of Justice Kennedy. Check out the article by Dean Eastman.
“Amazingly, we have a large number of FReepers who think it’s fine and dandy for these babies to grow up and become president someday.”
Trolls
Some of them are 13 year trolls. It’s beyond barf-inducing.
Liberals have chosen chaos theory to maintain power. We will divide ourselves at election time by endlessly debating policy points instead of uniting against the meta-cult known as liberalism now represented in the flesh by Obama.
No, you're wrong. Try reading the law.
"We need to change the law or the Constitution, whichever works."
No, we only need to change the administration.
The sooner we get Constitutionalists in place, the sooner we can straighten this country out.
A solution has been proposed as follows:
Congress could pass a bill stating that the wording of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, was intended, and is defined, to mean that foreign citizens visiting the US are not considered “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States for the purposes of extending citizenship to their offspring born during their visit.
The president would have to sign such a bill into law and then there would be the usual legal challenges, but it is a way to move the issue forward and into the public’s eye.
Republicans could have done this while Bush was president and they controlled both houses of congress.
But they were fully occupied passing democrats’ legislation for them, spending like drug crazed Obamas, and slopping all they could at the pig trough for themselves and their pals.
Yeah it should definitely be changed but money is being made off of it and many important people like the status quo, just like they like open borders. A lot of these “people” have “Incorporated” after their name and big corner offices.
It doesn’t make any difference which Party is in power they want more illegals and more immigrants here, regardless of what it does to change our culture. Most in DC don’t work for the people they work for interests with money to throw around.
If you think about it for 15 seconds we have seen Republicans and Democrats in office and each Party has had a chance to enforce borders or initiate an immigration policy that benefits the USA, but they don’t. Both Parties are owned. Their decisions should be based upon the wishes of the US people but they are based more upon what powerful global interests want.
[ The graduate housing at my College is full of Chinese girls having babies. ]
While I don’t blame them for wanting this, it is a perversion of the spirit of the law.
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