Anchor Babies

In response to my last post, commenter "l" writes:

The birth-right citizenship was created for the slaves already in the US after the civil war. The way it is being used now is not the original intent and is basically a way to reap the benefits from a neighboring country by strolling over a river, and I'd feel the same way about Canadians streaming over and having kiddos.

Most naturalized immigrants HATE the anchor baby situation here. Completely unfair to them.

I think this raises/demonstrates several interesting points:

1. This is a perfect case of the "Oh, that's not what they really meant" argument that people pull out when the Constitution happens to disagree with their policy preferences. Other examples include "Oh, the Founders didn't really want to separate church and state," and "Oh, the Founders really meant that only militias should have the right to bear arms." Obviously, liberals and conservatives both do this from time to time, but the fact that conservatives have to whip out this type of argument so much more often these days is evidence that, as today's politics are reckoned, the Constitution has a liberal bias.

2. Does "l" really think the authors of the 14th Amendment were too stupid to imagine that universal birthright citizenship would be mostly applied to the children of immigrants? The argument kind of strains credibility. And has it occurred to "l" that birthright citizenship has been in place for about 150 years? You'd think that if the amendment were being used in a way not intended by the authors, someone would have gone "oops!" and made a push to amend it sometime during that century-and-a-half. But they didn't.

3. I assume that when the commenter says "naturalized immigrants," he means "green card holders," since naturalized immigrants are citizens and parents of "anchor babies" are not. So, where does he get his evidence that "Most naturalized immigrants HATE the anchor baby situation here"?? I searched and couldn't find a poll. So maybe the commenter means that "green card holders, by rights, should resent the unfairness of anchor babies." Is that true, though? Do anchor babies reduce the number of green cards we hand out?

4. Anchor babies are mostly a myth. Wikipedia says:

The term "anchor baby" is a misnomer to the extent that it implies that by having a baby in the US, temporary or illegal immigrants can "anchor" themselves in the US. In fact, a US citizen child cannot file for a US visa for its parents until the child is 21 years of age, and upon reaching that age the child must also be earning at least 125% of the US poverty threshold to be able to apply. Thus, temporary or illegal immigrants who have babies in the US have no means of remaining legally in the US; they must return home and wait until the child reaches age 21. Illegal immigrants usually cannot immigrate even after the child turns 21 since they usually face a multi-year or lifetime ban from immigration to the USA regardless of sponsorship.

5. People who oppose birthright citizenship may not have stopped to consider what our society would look like without it. Can you imagine a whole class of people, living in America, raised speaking only English, with no ties to any foreign country, yet who are not American citizens because their grandparents were illegal immigrants? I can imagine such a class of people, because I have seen them in Japan, a country that does not have birthright citizenship; they are called "Zainichi Koreans," and let me tell you, they are not particularly patriotic toward a country that treats them as second-class citizens because of who their parents were. Does commenter "l" really want to create that kind of underclass here in America?

So, to sum up: I haven't seen any convincing case for why birthright citizenship is a bad idea. It seems very clear that to eliminate it would be asking for trouble in a big big way.

Country profiling for immigrants is a GREAT idea

In this article in MacLean's, Charlie Gillis worries that Canada is engaging in too much "country profiling" in its immigration policy - letting in Asians at the expense of Caribbeans and Latin Americans. This gives me an opportunity to stand up for country profiling in immigration, which I think is a great and underappreciated idea.

My reasoning for country profiling has little to do with the likelihood that some immigrant groups are more likely to succeed than others. I think if we want immigrants who are likely to succeed - which we do - we should simply bias our immigration policy toward admitting lots of highly skilled people, regardless of their country of origin (another thing Canada does, I might point out). This will have the effect of boosting our economy while lowering inequality.

Country profiling, on the other hand, is useful for purely political reasons.

Reason 1: Country profiling can help solve America's long-standing race problems. Admitting - soliciting! - lots of talented, motivated Africans is, I believe, our best bet for healing the seemingly indelible rift between white and black Americans. African immigrants, who come here willingly, do not possess the cultural memory of slavery, and thus lack the tendency to see whites as a historical oppressor. This is good; holding ethnic groups accountable for their ancestors' (or their ancestors' look-a-likes') sins is counterproductive, but it's a very difficult habit to kick. African immigrants' positive attitudes will (hopefully) slowly diffuse throughout the American black community. Additionally, high-skilled African immigrants in large numbers will help erase the achievement gap between blacks and whites (as an anecdotal example of this observe that our president is the son of an African immigrant).

So, high-skilled Africans should be our top priority for immigration.

Reason 2: Country profiling can ease Americans' fears over Mexican immigration. Mexican immigration is unpopular in America, despite these immigrants' low crime rate, rapid English adoption, and high rates of intermarriage. My guess is that this fear is less about race, and more about the simple size of the Mexican ethnic bloc. When immigrants are a polyglot, there is little danger - real or imagined - of one ethnic group replacing the dominant culture with its own language and institutions. But when a plurality of an area's population hails from a single country of origin - as Germans did in parts of the Midwest long long ago - there is naturally a feeling of unease among the native-born. Will the new super-bloc declare Spanish to be its natural language? Will they want to secede and return the Southwest to Mexico? These fears, routinely expressed in conservative circles, may be unfounded, but they represent American culture's instinctive desire to be a polyglot, patchwork nation.

Biasing immigration away from Spanish-speaking countries and toward other language groups can ease these fears and increase immigration's overall popularity.

Reason 3: Country profiling can help cement our overseas alliances. Immigration creates a two-way exchange of people, ideas, and capital between the source country and the host country. With the geopolitical situation turning decisively against American hegemony, our best bet for continuing to protect our country's interests lies in strong alliances, especially in Asia. Large numbers of immigrants from India, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, etc. will deepen business, cultural, and political ties between the U.S. and those nations, helping us build a coalition of Asian states wary of China's rise. Immigration from China, additionally, can help provide a refuge and a platform for dissident voices in that authoritarian country. And immigration from Brazil can cement our ties with that large and growing democracy.

So, in sum: if we're smart, we'll use country profiling. Done right, it can restore immigration's popularity, ameliorate America's racial divisions, and improve our international relations.

Open the gates!!

Immigration: THE most important issue

As Congress struggles to pass a financial reform bill, I think we should start looking past finance to a far, far more important issue: immigration reform.

Much has been made of America's short-term decline relative to other countries. But in the long run, America's future looks much brighter than China's or anyone else's, for one simple reason: immigration. Our ability to draw in and assimilate the world's population is a strength no other country on this planet (except Canada and Australia) possesses. In addition to keeping our population eternally young (while other countries struggle with aging societies and overburdened pensions), we get to skim off the cream of the crop - the most entrepreneurial, the smartest, the hardest-working. Immigration is America's ultimate trump card.

There are two big problems with our immigration system. the first is that, for reasons entirely unknown, we have made it much harded for super-talented people to work here. Increasing numbers of international grad students are going home. That means that we pay foreign people to get a world-class education, and they walk away and go apply their skills in other countries.

Why in Yahweh's name are we doing this public service for China and India when we could put those people to work inventing technologies and starting companies that give the rest of us Americans jobs? Massively increasing the number of H1-B visas is only the start; we must expand our green card quota and bias the system toward people who have studied here. In fact, we should give every single foreign grad student a green card upon completion of their studies.

The second immigration problem is, of course, illegals. Not that they are here, but that they are illegal. This means that they don't assimilate fast, and faster assimilation is better. If illegals have to be afraid of getting deported, they won't put their kids in public schools, they won't get jobs at companies where English is the first language, and they won't meet (and marry) a lot of people who speak English as their first language. In other words, they will stay foreigners forever, and only their native-born children will become true Americans.

We cannot afford this permanent-foreigner underclass. Not if we don't want to become France. So when reactionary anti-immigrant jerks make laws like the one just passed in Arizona, it hurts all of America. The only thing that can stop states from cracking down on illegals is a federal amnesty, like the one Reagan passed in 1986.

The constituency for immigration reform - basically, everyone except the hysterical nativists - is diffuse and disunited. This presents a formidable barrier to taking any kind of collective political action. But, however slowly, the word must spread - immigration reform is THE policy we need to pull our nation out of the (temporary) decline in which we currently find ourselves.