Let's Not Throw Out the Anchor Babies with the Bath

Americans just won't throw babies back.

Why is it so hard to answer the question: "If you deport illegal aliens, do you also deport their children who were born here?" The answer is, simple.  "No!" They are citizens by the Constitution if they are born on American soil. If the parents can find an American relative or someone who will raise them here, then they stay. If they go back to their home country and take the child with them, let them take the child's birth certificate and when the child is of age, he or she may come home to America as a legal citizen - perhaps adding the requirement that they pass the citizenship test since they missed all of that in school. What we don't do is throw babies into some kind of citizenship limbo. For heaven's sake, conservatives are the ones who don't want babies aborted. How can we throw an American citizen of whatever age into the outer darkness that is the homelands from which their parents have fled. 

Children born on US soil are citizens or can choose to be if they want to. That citizenship is theirs alone. But NOT their parents'. The parents go back if they are illegal. Heck, I would have a problem if we offered the parents some kind of work visa if they were employed or would get jobs here. They'd have to learn English and apply for citizenship like everyone else, though and the illegal entry could very probably delay their naturalization significantly - no early citizenship if you sneaked across the border. They'd have to prove themselves, support themselves and figure out how to do it before the child grows up because once that baby is 18, Mom and Dad go back unless they've worked something out with INS - made themselves indispensable at work or something like that. If the parents could show that they come from a place it's dangerous to return to, we could grant them refugee status. It would be the humane and a very American thing to do.

BUT THEY WOULD HAVE TO REPORT THEMSELVES TO IMMIGRATION AND DO THINGS LEGALLY. No Dream Act special privileges. Only good old American kindness and mercy should be at play in how we treat immigrants. I don't want to see us recreate the Trail of Tears by sending a massive stream of human beings back to a country that only knows how to make people, not take care of them.

And we slam the borders shut. We do that first and right now.

Easy solution and one Americans could live with. We're not monsters, but we can't be stupid either. That many people, here illegally, are going to fundamentally change the character of our nation. Those who go through the system and come legally are here to become Americans. Illegals tend to hide in cloistered communities and do not assimilate. We need to change that.
Actually, if you wanted to stop illegal immigration we should start making Republicans out of them. After all, we share so many values - we're pro-life, pro-faith, pro-family, pro-free market, and pro-opportunity. Teach illegals who their real friends are and the Dems would slam the doors shut so fast our collective ears would pop.

(c) 2015 by Tom King