My simple solution:
1. Make illegal presence in the United States a felony, to go into effect on a certain date.
2. Establish a guest worker program. Upon completion of work visa, visa holder must return home and reapply. Failure to do so is illegal presence in the United States (see #1).
3. Eliminate the anchor baby clause. (This will require a constitutional amendment.)
Amen...see my post 13.
Probably, but not necessarily, it depends on the interpretation of All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, . The children of foreign diplomats and foreign military personnel do not acquire citizenship if born in the US. An argument can be made, and legislation crafted, that children of legal temporary workers and certainly illegals are in similar circumstances with regard to jurisdiction. The courts might well be a problem.
The anchor baby clause may not require a constitutional amendment. Check out the following link-
http://www.americanpatrol.com/REFERENCE/anchorbaby_FAIR.html
Anchor Babies and Interpreting the 14th Amendment
It is well known that a person born in the United States is an automatic citizen regardless of the mother's citizenship status. However, the United States is unusual in its offer of citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil. Only a few European countries still grant automatic citizenship at birth. The United Kingdom and Australia repealed their U.S. style policy in the 1980s after witnessing abuses similar to those plaguing the U.S. today. Why does the United States continue to allow a practice subject to widespread fraud? The answer lies in how American jurisprudence has interpreted the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
The 14th Amendment was added to the Constitution as part of the post Civil War reforms aimed at addressing injustices to African Americans. It states that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States" and was crafted so that state governments could never deny citizenship to anyone born in the United States. However, when the amendment was crafted, the United States had no immigration policy, and thus the authors saw no need to state explicitly, what they believed was understood. The phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" was intended to exclude from automatic citizenship American-born persons whose allegiance to the United States was not complete. In the case of illegal aliens who are temporarily or unlawfully in the United States, because their native country has a claim of allegiance to the child, the completeness of the allegiance to the United States is impaired and logically precludes automatic citizenship.
"Every Person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.
Senator Jacob Howard, Co-author of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, 1866.
I had never read anything like this before and am not really familiar with the background on how the courts interpreted the amendment. But I thought that was interesting.
We all take it as a fact that the 14th amendment was written to give anyone born in the US automatic citizenship. I didn't realize that the "intent" of the clause may have changed. It is a shame how much US history we (myself included!) don't know. I have been interested in history since high school, but still am very ignorant even though I am always reading something!
Anyway, just wanted to post this for discussion.