U.S. laws says that any child born on U.S. soil is a citizen. This has created an entire industry where pregnant women will go to the U.S. just in time to have their baby. In some cases, the foreign parent will then take the child's U.S. birth certificate and get them a U.S. passport. When the child turns 21, they can sponsor members of their family to immigrate to the U.S. Some times this is done legally by using visitor visas, but other times it is done illegally.

The tragedy lies in women who sneak into this country illegally and have children with the hope that they will be allowed to stay in the country with their child. There are several cases of this happening. However there is no guarantee that the mother will be allowed to stay if she is discovered. recently such a case has been reported in the news. In this case the child is now 8 years old, the mother is in the country illegally and was deported. The mother has had a very publicized case where she has tried to stay in the U.S. because of her son. It's is because of these families, part illegal immigrants and part U.S. citizens why I hesitate on the idea of amnesty. In principal, I do not believe that illegal aliens should be rewarded for sneaking into the country. On the other hand I see nothing but trouble and heart-ache by splitting up these dual citizenship families.

A lot of the problems with illegal immigration is because we have allowed this sore to fester for years. I'm sure it would be fairly easy for hospitals to identify the babies of illegal immigrants. If we were not so lax on our immigration enforcement then there would not be as large a problem. Everyone understands why so many people try to sneak into the country. But that doesn't change the fact that it has become a very large problem for our society.

I think that we first need to close the loop holes that allow such things as anchor babies to exist. Enforce the border in an effective way, and if need be setup a stringent guest worker program. After that we can deal with how to humanely deal with the illegal immigrants that are already in this country and go after the employers that hire them.

In other words, control the immigration first and clean up the mess second.

- Thomas Paine 2

Technorati Tags: illegal immigration, immigration, politics, anchor babies