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Good Fences Don't Make Good Neighbors - ABC News

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Illegal Aliens Will Have Equal Ration Under Obama's Nationalized Health Care

Democrats have quietly included millions of illegal aliens under the Obama health coverage, and have prevented any Congressional hearings or floor debate on the issue. Stripped of the altruistic "outer garment," as Friedrich Engels would call it, this has to be seen as a win/win for President Obama and his party, which is buying the multi-generational political devotion of a decisive voting bloc with the taxes, credit and health care ration of Obama's probable future adversaries.

Millions of illegals covered under Obama healthcare
by Chad Groening - OneNewsNow

The ranking Republican on the House Subcommittee on Immigration says Democrats have refused to pass an amendment that would prevent illegal aliens from being covered in the Obama healthcare plan.

Democrats recently defeated a Republican-backed amendment offered by Rep. Dean Heller (R-Nevada) that would have prevented illegal immigrants from receiving government-subsidized healthcare under the proposed plan backed by House Democrats and President Obama.

Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa), the ranking member on the House Immigration Subcommittee, finds it outrageous that Democrats want to force hardworking Americans to foot the healthcare bill for those who are in the country illegally.

"The Democrats will not even allow an amendment to be debated on the subject matter. They have shut down the debate process here, and they have pushed any discussion -- however minimal it is -- up to the secret room up in the Rules Committee. They're not going to debate it," he points out. "They are determined to fund health insurance and healthcare for illegals -- and the number turns out to be 5.6 million that would be insured under this bill. [Those are] Congressional Budget Office numbers."

King suspects the actual number will be double that estimate or more.

Marriage Visa in a Nutshell

What is a "marriage" visa, exactly? A Sherman, California law firm, Pacifica International Law Group, has posted this brief summary of the K-3 "Marriage" Visa on its website (http://www.visa2america.com/k_3_marriage.html). Compare this description to the description of the "fiance(e)" visa in the previous post.

K-3 MARRIAGE

The Legal Immigration Family Equity Act and its amendments (LIFE Act) established a new nonimmigrant category within the immigration law that allows the spouse of a U.S. citizen to be admitted to the United States in a nonimmigrant category. The admission allows the spouse or child to complete processing for permanent residence while in the United States. It also allows those admitted in the new category to have permission for employment while they await processing of their case to permanent resident status.

The foreign spouse’s unmarried children under the age of twenty-one can be included in the parent’s petition and receive K4 visas with the same privileges as the parents K3 visa. However, if a child is 18 years of age or older at the time of marriage then, although the child can receive a K4 visa and enter the U.S., that child cannot obtain a green card and become a U.S. immigrant. The child’s K4 will simply expire after two years or when the child reaches the age of 21, whichever occurs first.

Fiance(e) Visa in a Nutshell

What exactly is a "fiance" visa? With the growth of Internet introduction sites, increasing numbers of foreign women are relocating to the U.S. before they actually marry the U.S. men who petition them into America. Their visas cannot be initiated at a U.S. consulate, but must be petitioned stateside by the prospective U.S. spouse. Pacifica International Law Group's website (http://www.visa2america.com/k_1_fianc_e_.html) offers this succinct summary of the K-1 "Fiance" visa.

K-1 FIANCE(e)


The immigration laws provide a nonimmigrant visa classification ("K-1") for persons coming to the United States to marry American citizens and reside here.

To establish K-1 visa classification for an alien fiancé(e), an American citizen must file a petition with the Regional Service Center of the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) having jurisdiction over the place of the petitioner's residence in the United States. Such petitions may not be adjudicated abroad. The approved petition will be forwarded by USCIS to the American consular office where the alien fiancé(e) will apply for his/her visa. The visa application procedures and policies followed by U.S. consular posts vary depending on the local conditions and requirements.


After an alien fiancé(e) has obtained a K-1 visa and entered the U.S., the alien fiancé(e) must get married to the U.S. citizen who petitioned for him/her within 90 days of admission. After marriage, the alien fiancé(e) becomes the spouse and may file application for permanent residence in the U.S.


The children of K-1 visa holders will be admitted with K-2 visa, for a same time of their parents or until the day before such children's 21st birthday or marriage, whichever is shorter. The child of the K-1 beneficiary may acquire K-2 status even after the beneficiary has married the U.S. citizen petitioner and acquired lawful permanent resident status in the U.S. However, the child must apply for a K-2 visa within 1 year from the date of the issuance of the K-1 visa. After 1 year, the filing of an immigrant visa petition would be required for the child.

9,400 Mexicans Filed Refugee Applications in Canada Last Year; Now Mexican Lesbians Allege Homophobic Persecution

Two Mexican lesbians filed for refugee status in Canada earlier this month, claiming Mexican officials will persecute them if they return home. So many Mexican and Czech nationals have filed refugee applications upon arrival that Canada has restricted visas granted to applicants from those countries. According to this report in The Ottawa Sun, more than 9,400 Mexicans filed refugee applications in Canada last year.

The Ottawa Sun
Mexican lesbian lovers claim refugee status in Canada
by Tom Godfrey

Two lesbians who slipped into Canada before visas were imposed on Mexicans have claimed refugee status, alleging they'll be raped or killed if sent back home. Norma Angelica Gomez, 33, and Alina Gallegos Lee, 34, say their dream is to get married in Toronto and be happy. The couple fled to Canada a year ago, but claimed asylum last March after going public with their love in Mexico. They claimed they were harassed, followed and beaten by Mexican police for expressing their love. "Canada is a good country and we feel free," Lee said yesterday. "At home, we were constantly persecuted for being lesbians."

The couple claim the attacks against them escalated after they were detained and beaten by police last year in Mexico. According to Amnesty International, gays and lesbians in Mexico are routinely beaten, sexually assaulted, raped or tortured by police and soldiers.

The couple's lawyer, George Kubes, said he's sending the lovers for an assessment at the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture. "They were beaten up by police and called names," Kubes said. "For a long time the Mexican police have been harassing them." He said the couple always dreamed of getting married in Canada and being happy. "They want to live a happy life in Canada," Kubes said. "This couple is genuinely in love."

Last Monday, visas were imposed by Canada to visitors from Mexico and the Czech Republic due to a large number of those nationals staying behind as refugee claimants. Mexico has been Canada's top source of refugees since 2005. Last year, more than 9,400 refugee claims were filed in Canada by Mexican nationals. Of the claims reviewed and finalized last year, only 11% were accepted.

Hidden Impact of Illegal Immigration on Public Health, U.S. Institutions and Budget

Medical lawyer Madeleine P. Cosner published this 2005 article in a professional journal. She wrote that illegal immigrants are having serious hidden negative impacts on public health, on our institutions, and our budget, and she proposes a program, complete with acronym, to regain control of illegal immigration.

Illegal Aliens and American Medicine
By Madeleine Pelner Cosman, Ph.D.
Journal of the American Physicians and Surgeons
Volume 10, Number 1 - Spring 2005

The Seen and the Unseen
The influx of illegal aliens has serious hidden medical consequences. We judge reality primarily by what we see. But what we do not see can be more dangerous, more expensive, and more deadly than what is seen.

What is unseen is their free medical care that has degraded and closed some of America's finest emergency medical facilities, and caused hospital bankruptcies: 84 California hospitals are closing their doors. 'Anchor babies' born to illegal aliens instantly qualify as citizens for welfare benefits and have caused enormous rises in Medicaid costs and stipends under Supplemental Security Income and Disability Income.

By default, we grant health passes to illegal aliens. Yet many illegal aliens harbor fatal diseases that American medicine fought and vanquished long ago, such as drug-resistant tuberculosis, malaria, leprosy, plague, polio, dengue, and Chagas disease.

What is seen is the political statistic that 43 million lives are at risk in America because of lack of medical insurance. What is unseen is that medical insurance does not equal medical care. Uninsured people receive medical care in hospital emergency departments (EDs) under the coercive Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1985 (EMTALA), which obligates hospitals to treat the uninsured but does not pay for that care. Also unseen is the percentage of the uninsured who are illegal aliens. No one knows how many illegal aliens reside in America. If there are 10 million, they constitute nearly 25 percent of the uninsured. The percentage could be even higher.

EMTALA
The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) requires every ED to treat anyone who enters with an 'emergency' - including cough, headache, hangnail, cardiac arrest, herniated lumbar disc, drug addiction, alcohol overdose, gunshot wound, automobile trauma, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-positive infection, mental problem, or personality disorder.... Any patient coming to a hospital ED requesting 'emergency' care must be screened and treated until ready for discharge, or stabilized for transfer - whether or not insured, 'documented,' or able to pay. A woman in labor must remain to deliver her child.

EMTALA is an unfunded federal mandate. Government imposes viciously stiff fines and penalties on any physician and any hospital refusing to treat any patient that a zealous prosecutor deems an emergency patient, even though the hospital or physician screened and declared the patient's illness or injury non-emergency.

High-technology EDs have degenerated into free medical offices. Between 1993 and 2003, 60 California hospitals closed because half their services became unpaid. Another 24 California hospitals verge on closure. Even ambulances from Mexico come to American EDs with indigents because the drivers know that EMTALA requires accepting patients who come.

Los Angeles County Trauma Care Network, built in 1983, was one of America's finest emergency medical response organizations. EMTALA contributed to the Trauma Care Network's loss of focus and loss of money.

In Los Angeles, 95 percent of outstanding homicide warrants are for illegal aliens, as are 66 percent of fugitive felony warrants. The notorious 18 Street Gang has 20,000 members, of whom 60 to 80 percent are illegal aliens, according to the California Department of Justice and the Los Angeles Police Department, respectively.

Illegal aliens move freely in crime sanctuary cities. In Los Angeles, San Diego, Stockton, New York, Chicago, Miami, Austin, and Houston, no hospital, physician, city employee, or police officer is permitted to report immigration violators to the Department of Homeland Security's Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Los Angeles Police Department prohibits police officers from 'initiating police action where the objective is to discover the alien status of a person.'

As many as 10,000 illegals cross the 1,940-mile-long border with Mexico each day. About 33 percent are caught. Many try again, immediately. Authorities estimate about 3,500 illegal aliens daily become permanent U.S. residents - at least 3 million annually. EMTALA rewards them with extensive, expensive medical services, free of charge, if they claim an emergency need for care.

Anchor Babies
American hospitals welcome 'anchor babies.' Illegal alien women come to the hospital in labor and drop their little anchors, each of whom pulls its illegal alien mother, father, and siblings into permanent residency simply by being born within our borders.

Anchor babies instantly qualify for public welfare aid. Between 300,000 and 350,000 anchor babies annually become citizens because of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: 'All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the State wherein they reside.'

In 2003 in Stockton, California, 70 percent of the 2,300 babies born in San Joaquin General Hospital's maternity ward were anchor babies, and 45 percent of Stockton children under age six are Latino (up from 30 percent in 1993). In 1994, 74,987 anchor babies in California hospital maternity units cost $215 million and constituted 36 percent of all Medi-Cal births. Now they account for substantially more than half.

Illegal aliens have translators, advocates, and middlemen supplied by immigrants' civil rights groups or by Medicaid. MediCal in 2003 had 760,000 illegal aliens, up from 2002 when there were 470,000. Supplemental Security Income is a nonmeans- tested federal grant of money and food stamps. People qualify easily. Scams, frauds, and cheats are rampant.

Among the organizations directing illegal aliens into America's medical systems are the Ford Foundation-funded Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund; the National Immigration Law Center; the American Immigration Lawyers Association; the American Bar Association's Commission on Immigration Policy, Practice, and Pro Bono; the Immigrant Legal Resource Center; the National Council of George Soros's Open Society Institute; the Migration Policy Institute; the National Network for Immigration and Refugee Rights; and the Southern Poverty Law Center. And there are more.

Immigrants on SSI, including legal aliens, refugees, and illegals with fraudulent Social Security cards, numbered a mere 127,900 aliens (3.3 percent of recipients) in 1982. By 1992 the numbers expanded to 601,430 entitled (10.9 percent of recipients). In 2003, this figure was several million (about 25 percent of recipients). The National Immigration Law Center (NILC) proudly announced that it obtained expensive cancer treatments, prenatal care, and critical health services for immigrants by means of its litigation.

Many illegals who cross our borders have tuberculosis. That disease had largely disappeared from America, thanks to excellent hygiene and powerful modern drugs such as isoniazid and rifampin.

TB's swift, deadly return now is lethal for about 60 percent of those infected because of new Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (MDRTB). Until recently MDR-TB was endemic to Mexico.

TB was virtually absent in Virginia until in 2002, when it spiked a 17 percent increase, but Prince William County, just south of Washington, D.C., had a much larger rise of 188 percent. Public health officials blamed immigrants. In 2001 the Indiana School of Medicine studied an outbreak of MDR-TB, and traced it to Mexican illegal aliens. The Queens, New York, health department attributed 81 percent of new TB cases in 2001 to immigrants.

Chagas disease, also called American trypanosomiasis or 'kissing bug' disease is transmitted by the reduviid bug, which prefers to bite the lips and face. The protozoan parasite that it carries, infects 18 million people annually in Latin America and causes 50,000 deaths. This disease also infiltrates America's blood supply.

Leprosy, a scourge in Biblical days and in medieval Europe, so horribly destroys flesh and faces it was called the 'disease of the soul.'... Leprosy, Hansen's disease, was so rare in America that in 40 years only 900 people were afflicted. Suddenly, in the past three years America has more than 7,000 cases of leprosy. Leprosy now is endemic to northeastern states because illegal aliens and other immigrants brought leprosy from India, Brazil, the Caribbean, and Mexico.

Dengue fever is exceptionally rare in America, though common in Ecuador, Peru, Vietnam, Thailand, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Mexico. Recently there was a virulent outbreak of dengue fever in Webb County, Texas, which borders Mexico.

Polio was eradicated from America, but now reappears in illegal immigrants, as do intestinal parasites. Malaria was obliterated, but now is re-emerging in Texas. Asians number 4 percent of Americans, but account for more than half of Hepatitis B cases.

CRAG: A Proposal to Prevent Medical Cataclysm

Tough medicine could end the cataclysm in American medicine. I suggest the acronym CRAG for four critical actions to reclaim America's EDs; to restore medicine's proud scientific excellence and profitability; and to protect Americans against bacterial, viral, parasitic, and fungal infectious diseases that illegal aliens carry across our borders.

Close America's borders. Prevent illegal entry with fences, high-tech security devices, and troops re-deployed from Germany and South Korea. Deport illegal aliens. Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement has a division of Detention and Removal dedicated to deportation. It is hobbled by the powerful Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the Department of Justice court system that consists of the U.S. Immigration Court (USIC) plus an appellate court, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA).

Rescind the citizenship of anchor babies. We must overturn the misinterpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution grants citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States and "subject to the jurisdiction thereof." An illegal alien mother is subject to the jurisdiction of her country. The baby of an illegal alien mother also is subject to that home country's jurisdiction.

When the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, its purpose was to assure rights of freedom and citizenship to newly emancipated Negro citizens. American Indians, however, were excluded from American citizenship because of their tribal jurisdiction. Also not subject to American jurisdiction were foreign visitors, ambassadors, consuls, and their babies born here. For citizenship, the person was required to submit to complete, exclusive American jurisdiction, owing allegiance to no other nation.

Long ago the Supreme Court correctly confirmed this restricted interpretation of citizenship in the so-called 'Slaughter-House cases' [83 US 36 (1873)] and in [112 US 94 (1884)]. In Elk v.Wilkins, the phrase 'subject to its jurisdiction' excluded from its operation 'children of ministers, consuls, and citizens of foreign states born within the United States.'

In Elk, the American Indian claimant was born in America, but considered not An American citizen because the law required him to be 'not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction and owing them direct and immediate allegiance.' To obtain citizenship, an American Indian had to separate from his tribe and be accepted by the United States as a citizen. A special act of Congress was needed to grant full citizenship to American Indians.

The Citizens Act of 1924, codified in 8 USC 1401, provides that: The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth: (a) a person born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof; (b) a person born in the United States to a member of an Indian, Eskimo, Aleutian, or other aboriginal tribe.

Congress by legislation has the right to create uniform rules on naturalization, and to create dual citizenship and similar variations upon 'jurisdiction.' We must be vigilant against congressmen voting to extend the list of those born here to include illegal aliens or other lawbreakers, conferring American citizenship and its generous social and medical benefits on babies born to criminals.

Aiding and abetting illegal aliens is a crime. Punish it. This will anger devotees of illegal aliens who believe that the Constitution guarantees them civil rights that trump American administrative, civil, and criminal laws.

Grant no new amnesties. We must choose either to surrender medicine to illegal aliens, or to fight illegal aliens. Surrender to illegal aliens is surrender to collectivist America: land of moral ambiguity and home of pacifist appeasement. Fighting against illegal aliens is fighting for individualistic America: land of moral strength, and home of responsible liberty.

As we fight to reclaim medicine, so we defend our nation.

Madeleine Pelner Cosman, Ph.D., Esq., is a medical lawyer, who formerly taught medical students at the City University of New York.

Anchor Children: A Critical History of the Constitutional Doctrine

The practice of the U.S. government is to recognize all children born on U.S. soil as U.S. citizens. Illegal aliens have used this policy to anchor themselves in the U.S. as parents of citizen children. Although there have been proposals to change that policy since 9/11, or at least to deny illegal alien parents the anchoring strategy, the consensus view spanning the Left and Right alike is that the birthright citizenship policy should not be disturbed.

Birthright supporters often rest their position vaguely on the Constitution, or specifically cite to the 14th Amendment. But P.A. Madison posted this criticism of the Constitutional basis of territorial birthright in The Federalist Blog in 2005.

Alien Birthright Citizenship: A Fable That Lives Through Ignorance

Ever since the subject of Congress taking up Birthright Citizenship have we seen the power of ignorance at work through the mainstream media. It is difficult to find any editorial or wire story that correctly gives the reader an honest and accurate historical account of the Fourteenth Amendment in regards to children born to foreign parents within the United States. Most often the media presents a fabled and inaccurate account of just what the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment means.

Recent story lines go something like this: "Currently the Constitution says that a person born in this country is an American citizen. That's it. No caveats." The problem with these sort of statements other than being plainly false is that it reinforces a falsehood that has become viewed as a almost certain fact through such false assertions over time.

This is like insisting the sun rotates around the earth while ignoring the body of evidence to the contrary.

During the reconstruction period following the civil war the view on citizenship was that only children born to American parents owing allegiance to no other foreign power could be declared an American Citizen upon birth on U.S. soil. This is exactly the language of the civil rights bill of 1866: "All persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States."

The author of the Fourteenth Amendment, Rep. John A Bingham (OH), responded to the above declaration as follows: "I find no fault with the introductory clause, which is simply declaratory of what is written in the Constitution, that every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen."

Already, before we get to the Fourteenth Amendment Citizenship Clause, we have the entire Congress declaring only children born to parents who owe no foreign allegiance shall be citizens. We also have the author of the Fourteenth Amendment declaring this is law of the land.

It just gets worse for advocates who want to either believe - or revise history to support their fable - that the Fourteenth Amendment somehow magically makes anyone born in the United States regardless of the allegiance of their parents a natural-born citizen.

Sen. Jacob Howard, who wrote the Fourteenth's Citizenship Clause believed the same thing as Bingham as evidenced by his introduction of the clause to the US Senate as follows:

[T]his amendment which I have offered is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already, that 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.

Advocates for birthright citizenship for aliens either through ignorance, or deception, attempt to pretend "subject to the jurisdiction" means only one thing: location at time of birth. It does not, and never had such a meaning during the time period in question. The record of law is full of references to jurisdiction that had nothing to do with physical location. Take for example title XXX of 1875, sec 2165 where is states:

[Any] alien who was residing within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States...

Simply being on US soil (limits) does not automatically put you under US jurisdiction like some pro alien advocates would like to believe. Under the common myth of the meaning -- simply being within the limits of a State automatically places an alien under US jurisdiction for Fourteenth Amendment purposes. It does not as Bingham and Howard plainly makes clear as well as laws regarding the subject at the time also make clear.

So than, what exactly did subject to the jurisdiction mean? Sen. Lyman Trumbull, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, framer of the Thirteenth Amendment told us in clear language what the phrase means under the Fourteenth:

[T]he provision is, that 'all persons born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens.' That means 'subject to the complete jurisdiction thereof.' What do we mean by 'complete jurisdiction thereof?' Not owing allegiance to anybody else. That is what it means.

Sen. Jacob M. Howard, responded to Trumbull's construction by saying:

[I] concur entirely with the honorable Senator from Illinois [Trumbull], in holding that the word "jurisdiction," as here employed, ought to be construed so as to imply a full and complete jurisdiction on the part of the United States, whether exercised by Congress, by the executive, or by the judicial department; that is to say, the same jurisdiction in extent and quality as applies to every citizen of the United States now.

One might wonder why did Jacob Howard use the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" rather than the language of the civil rights bill of 1866 and 1870? The answer is simple: there was confusion over what a Indian’s allegiance might be and most everyone in Congress at the time did not want to give blanket citizenship to all Indians across the board.

In other words, it was feared by some that an Indian might be considered to owe no allegiance to any foreign power, and therefore, could become a citizen at birth. Since Indians were not under the direct jurisdiction of the United States (they were under the jurisdiction of their respected tribes) the language of the Fourteenth Amendment would disqualify them. This is why the language of the Citizenship Clause ended up different than the language of the civil rights bill of 1866 and 1870 and made more restrictive as to who could become a citizen by birth.

Myths can be difficult to dispose of, and birthright citizenship to aliens is no exception. Pro-immigration advocates will refer to the Supreme Court ruling U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark as a desperate attempt to keep the fable alive. The problem with relying on Wong Kim Ark is that it draws zero support from the Fourteenth Amendment. In fact, the ruling had nothing to with the Fourteenth Amendment at all, but everything to do with English Common Law, something the Fourteenth's Citizenship Clause had no connection because it was a virtue of "national law."

There are other significant problems with the Wong Kim Ark ruling, other than having no basis in Fourteenth Amendment text, intent and history that will never hold up under review -- and that is how will any court with a straight face attempt to reconcile the civil rights bill of 1870. Remember that civil rights bill declared those children born to parents subject to a foreign power cannot be declared United States citizens.

You cannot simply revise he Fourteenth's Citizenship Clause to mean yes, it really was the intent of the Congress to grant citizenship to alien children born on US soil when the same Congress enacted law afterwards that did just the reverse. Try and explain why Congress would pass a Constitutional Amendment that grants citizenship to ANYONE born in the US and then turn around and pass a law that would deny automatic citizenship to aliens? Because you cannot, only leads us back to the to the exact construction of the clause for which it was intended and written to mean.

The Wong Kim Ark ruling is so badly flawed and irrelevant probably led to the US Supreme Court in 1982 to say they "had never confirmed birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens."

By far the most relevant Supreme Court ruling on the subject to date, and indeed, fully supported by the Fourteenth Amendment itself came in Elk v. Wilkins 112 U.S. 94 (1884), where the court held that the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction" requires "direct and immediate allegiance" to the United States, not just physical presence.

If pro-immigration groups or individuals want to continue in believing the Fourteenth Amendment grants citizenship to anyone born in the country regardless of their allegiance, fine. But to continue to insist the Fourteenth Amendment supports their fable is both feeble and a disrespect to American history.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Comment posted anonymously:

The United States never granted territorial birthright by National Law. Aliens who gave birth to children within the United States were by National Law always alien. This remained true for most of the 19th and 20th century. Federal courts always upheld allegiance to the United States by the child's father in such controversies.

The question of Wong Ark did not involve any question of allegiance and therefore is a imporoper citation to support territorial birthright. National Law always trumped Common Law before the Supreme Court.

It is illegal by both 19th century National Law and under the 14th Amendemnt to bestow citizenship upon aliens under territorial birthright rule.

Blessed Are the (Fertile) Faithful: They Shall Inherit the West

Phillip Longman is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, where he studies health care policy and demography. A former editor at U. S. News & World Report, Longman is the winner of UCLA's Gerald Loeb Award, the top prize for investigative journalism from Investigative Reporters and Editors. His 2004 book The Empty Cradle (Basic Books) explored the impact of declining fertility rates on the social, economic, and political health of societies across the globe. W. Bradford Wilcox interviewed him in 2007 for Christianity Today.

Fertility, Faith, & the Future of the West
A conversation with Phillip Longman
Interview by W. Bradford Wilcox | Christianity Today

Q: Since the 1960s, many in the West have been deeply concerned about the social and environmental consequences of population growth — witness, for instance, the popularity of Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb. In the United States, our population recently passed the 300-million mark. Should we in the West still be concerned about population growth at home and abroad?

A: World population is still increasing by some 77 million annually. That's equivalent to adding a whole new country the size of Egypt every year. Yet here is a curious fact few people know: the number of children under 5 in the world is actually smaller than in 1990.

How can this be? Mostly it is because of the massive global decline in birthrates. Now, in literally every region outside of sub-Saharan Africa, the average woman no longer bears enough children to replace the population. For now, world population continues to grow, though at a slower and slower rate, primarily because of the enormous increase in the numbers of elderly people. But many countries, such as Russia and Japan, are already shrinking in absolute size, and on current trends, global depopulation will occur within the lifetime of today's young adults.

Q: Why should we be worried about falling birthrates in Europe and the United States? What are the social, economic, and political implications of this demographic phenomenon for the West?

A: For nations, as for people, there are many benefits to not having children, at least until you grow old. Many economists believe, for example, that falling birth rates helped make possible the economic boom that occurred first in Japan and then in many other Asian nations, beginning in the 1960s. As the relative number of children declined, so did the burden of their dependency, leaving more resources available for adults to invest and enjoy.

But over time, a falling birthrate means not just fewer children but also fewer workers, even as the population of dependent elders increases. That's the bind that grips more and more of the world today. There are fewer and fewer working-aged people to support each elder. This is true within the formal systems we use to provide support in old age, such as Social Security, Medicare, and private pension plans. And it is also true within the family. When you grow up with few or no siblings, as is now becoming the norm throughout much of the world, there is often no one else available to share in the burden of looking after one's ailing parents.

Ultimately, low fertility means population aging and population decline. This is not all bad. A population dominated by middle-aged and elderly people, for example, is probably less inclined to send its few children off to war. But our economy, particularly large sectors like housing and transportation, has always depended on population growth to sustain economic growth. Similarly, the government programs we use to create security in old age, like Social Security as currently structured, depend on an ever increasing supply of youth.

At best, all the major institutions of our society will have to be fundamentally reformed to deal with a world in which each new generation is smaller than the last. Refusing to face up to this means rising poverty, increased taxes, depleted savings, lower investment, and a very real risk that excessive government borrowing and pension debt will tank the world economy. All this could happen much sooner than most people realize.

Today, for example, the United States has a fairly healthy birthrate compared to the rest of the industrialized world, but it has grown dependent on massive borrowing from rapidly aging nations. Germany, Japan, and China are growing so old that they will soon be drawing down their savings and repatriating their investments in U.S. debt. This implies a complete restructuring of the world economy—one that could well entail a prolonged global recession or depression.

Q: You are a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, a progressive think tank. Why should progressives be concerned about fertility declines in the West? How do fertility declines specifically threaten progressive values and public policies?

A: It's fair to say that most self-described "progressives" don't agree with me that low fertility is a problem. Many environmentalists, for example, believe that fewer people means a cleaner environment. Other progressives suppose that a decline in population would increase the amount of food and other resources available to the poor. Many feminists, gays, and "childless by choice" people in general feel threatened by suggestions that society needs more children. And when it's pointed out that the lowest birthrates are generally found among the most "progressive" people, then the conversation gets really heated.

On all these counts, I believe progressives are in denial. Today in the United States, for example, we have far cleaner air and water than we did in the 1940s, when the population was just half its current size. That's no paradox. Population growth is a spur to more efficient and cleaner use of resources, so our cities are no longer choked with smoke from steam engines and our cars get far better mileage and are far less polluting.

Similarly, population growth is what drove us as a society to find far more productive ways to grow food. Thanks to increased crop yields, per capita food production is higher than ever, even as world population surpasses 6 billion. At the same time, there is more forested land in the United States than in the 19th century because so much less acreage is needed for farmland.

Progressives also tend to forget that many of their positions on human reproduction, such as a "woman's right to choose," only won widespread support when fears of overpopulation began to pervade the culture in the 1960s and '70s. Until then, bans on abortion, birth control, and homosexuality, for example, were justified in many people's minds by fears of underpopulation, which left questions of human reproduction too important to be settled by individual "choice." They also forget that if progressives themselves "forget to have children" then the future belongs to people who have opposing values. Finally, progressives forget that without a growing population, such "crown jewels" of the welfare state as Social Security lose their financial sustainability.

Q: How might dramatic population declines in Europe, and the severe economic and political challenges they pose to countries like Germany, which may soon see its pension system collapse under the weight of its own demographic decline, affect élite thinking about the family? Many scholars, public policy analysts, and journalists I'm familiar with tend to assume that the family is simply destined to grow ever weaker. Might dramatic demographic developments change élite thinking about the family? Might such developments also change the kinds of family-related public policies Western élites support?

A: During the 19th and especially the 20th century, the state gradually took over many of the functions once performed by the family—notably education and support in old age. Élites have generally cheered this process on. But more and more in the future, individuals will find that they cannot rely on the élites who govern them. They will see health and pension benefits cut, even as taxes rise. They will see funding for education squeezed by the ever growing burden of providing even minimal benefits to the dependent elderly. This implies that more and more people will be forced to rely again on the traditional, extended family. People will need to have children and raise them well if they hope to find security in old age. For the same reason, they will also have to sacrifice on behalf of their aging parents so that their own children grow up to see this as a moral duty.

Today, élites who are uncomfortable with this future are calling for the state to take over still more responsibilities from the family — for example, by offering subsidies for child care, greater family allowances, or even bonuses to parents, all of which are being tried in Europe and much of Asia. I'm not opposed to such measures on ideological grounds, but I'm doubtful about their potential to boost the birthrate for more than a short time unless very serious amounts of money are involved, and that creates huge political problems.

If you are going to pay people to have children, you're going to spend a lot on people who would have had them anyway. And meanwhile, people who currently see no reason to become parents are not going to be persuaded by the offer of even tens of thousands of dollars in benefits. In the United States, the direct cost of raising a middle-class child born this year through age 18, according to government estimates, exceeds $200,000—not including college. Meanwhile, in an age in which most women have the opportunity to join the paid workforce, the cost of motherhood — in lost wages and compromised careers—is often measured in the millions.

The huge bundle of benefits World War II veterans received under the G.I. Bill does seem to have contributed to that era's baby boom. But in those days, we didn't have to pay for Medicare, and Social Security was only a tiny percentage of federal spending. The median age of voters was also much lower then than now, and the feminist and environmental movements were still in the future. For all these reasons, I think élites are going to have a hard time selling pronatalism on a scale that's sufficient to the problem. In the end, I see élites simply losing their legitimacy because they cannot maintain, much less expand the welfare state in an aging society.

Q: If the demographic predictions you make in The Empty Cradle come to pass, how might they affect the relative position of orthodox religions in the West? In other words, what role might Islam, evangelical Protestantism, or traditional Catholicism play in Western countries that have experienced subreplacement fertility for 40 to 50 years? How might their distinctive approaches to family life look to ordinary people? To élites?

A: On current trends, Europe's population just withers away. But I don't expect current trends to continue indefinitely in Europe or the West in general, for a special reason.

In Asian countries such as Japan, nearly everyone eventually marries and eventually has, almost without exception, one child. In Europe, and the West in general, by contrast, there is far more diversity in reproductive behavior. Among American baby boomers, for example, nearly a fifth of us never had children, and another 17 percent had only one.

The high incidence of childless and single-child families in the West has one big implication many overlook. It means a very large proportion of the children that are being born are being produced by a small subset of the current population. And who are the people who are still having large families today?

The stereotypical answer is poor people, or dumb people, or members of minority groups. But birth rates among American racial and ethnic minority groups are plummeting. The more accurate answer is deeply religious people.

To be sure, religious fundamentalists of all varieties are themselves having fewer children than in the past. But whether they be Mormons, Orthodox Jews, or Islamic or Christian fundamentalists, devout member of these Abrahamic religions have on average far larger families than do the secular elements within their society.

In Europe, for example, the fertility differential between believers and nonbelievers has recently been estimated at 15-20 percent. Though children born into religious families often do not become religious themselves, many do, especially if they themselves go on to have children. Meanwhile, of course, the childless stand no chance of passing along their values to their progeny.

The faithful thus begin to inherit society by default. The West's total population may fall or stagnate, perhaps for quite awhile; but those who remain will be disproportionately committed to God and family, whether they be Christians, Muslims, Jews, or members of new pro-natal faiths. Let us just hope that this new age of faith will also be an age of peace.

W. Bradford Wilcox, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Virginia and a fellow at the Witherspoon Institute, is the author of Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands (Univ. of Chicago Press).

Copyright © 2007 by the author or Christianity Today International/Books & Culture magazine.

Judicial Watch Public Interest Law Firm Tackles Sanctuary Cities, Day Labor Sites

Judicial Watch, better known for lawsuits against the last two presidents, has taken on the issue of immigration enforcement, suing sanctuary cities from Arizona to Maryland, and shutting down a tax-funded day labor rendezvous in northern Virginia.

Its website, partially reproduced below, outlines the public interest law firm's objections to the current system, and implies its strategy.

Judicial Watch Litigates Against Illegal Immigration

Today, between twelve and twenty million illegal aliens reside in the United States, draining our nation's economy, and presenting a security threat to the people of the United States. Public officials have not only repeatedly failed to protect our borders from this illegal alien invasion, but they have also been complicit in the effort to undermine our nation's immigration laws by implementing so-called "sanctuary policies" for illegal aliens.

These sanctuary policies take many forms, including taxpayer-funded day labor sites, police policies that prohibit police officers from communicating with federal immigration officials and other local or state government policies that are magnets for more illegal aliens to cross the border. Sanctuary policies not only violate our nation's federal immigration laws, but they also worsen an already out-of-control illegal immigration crisis.


Judicial Watch members and supporters have said repeatedly they want Judicial Watch to lead the battle against illegal immigration. For this reason, Judicial Watch has launched a nationwide campaign to enforce our nation's immigration laws.

Scofflaw Criminals Released from U.S. Prisons Because They're Wretched Refuse

Prosecutor Ames Holbrook has written a book, reviewed on the ANCIR website by immigration activist Michael Cutler, about his frustration in trying to deport violent criminals who are illegal aliens. I hope this won't be mistaken for a slur against all immigrants. In fact, the primary victims of immigrant criminals are their own countrymen, and the first beneficiaries of aggressive deportation would be the hard-working, law-abiding immigrants who would be left in peace.

The Deporter
by Ames Holbrook
reviewed by Michael Cutler

America's immigration system is obviously broken, but to get a sense for just how dysfunctional it really is, scan the pages of Ames Holbrook's “The Deporter." This first-person account of the four years Holbrook spent working to deport criminal aliens from the United States is as hair-raising as it is distressing.

Take Holbrook's description of his encounter with an illegal alien named “Rodolfo," a career criminal “with eight felony convictions, burglary to battery, and a sex assault thrown in." Holbrook walked him out of jail but instead of throwing him out of the country, he had to release him free and clear. Why? Because he falsely claimed he was from Cuba.

There is a short list of countries - in Holbrook's terminology the “Big Four" - that do not take back their criminal citizens: Cuba, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. If the country will not issue travel documents for its citizens to return home, there is nothing deportation officers can do to get these criminals out of the United States. Holbrook explains that many criminals know the system well enough to know how not to get deported. Rodolfo, who was most likely a Mexican, knew that if he admitted his true nationality he'd be deported back home. So he claimed to be Cuban and without any document to prove otherwise (which is why illegals are offically known as undocumented aliens), he couldn't be deported.

What makes things even worse is that because of a 2001 Supreme Court decision, the immigration authorities can no longer indefinitely detain criminal aliens from countries that will not take them back. So when a criminal alien is finished serving his jail term, deportation officers like Holbrook are forced to release them back among the rest of us.

In another case, Holbrook had to inform a Vietnamese woman called Jacqueline that the violent felon who attacked her was being released from custody. Since his native country, Laos, wouldn't take him back, and the courts ruled he couldn't be held indefinitely, he had to be let go. Holbrook says he is haunted by her cries of anguish.

As a former immigration agent, I can sympathize with Holbrook's predicament. But some of his descriptions of breaking rules and resorting to deceitful tactics just to get criminal aliens deported - like lying about the crimes for which the alien was convicted so that the foreign country will be forced to accept their citizen - are worrisome to say the least.

This is a story for anyone who is concerned about how the failure to secure this country's borders imperils our safety and our nation's security. But it's only one story. Frighteningly, each of the other components of the immigration system is just as dysfunctional as the deportation branch described here.

Widener Law Professor Says Immigration Waivers Excessive, We Say Such Chaos Must Surely Ripen Into Corruption

Widener Law Professor Jill E. Family has penned an article on explicit and implicit waivers in our civil immigration adjudication system, and concludes - not surprisingly - that it is out of control.

This cannot come as a shock to anybody who has paid more than five minutes' attention to our immigration system in the past 30 years.

She published her research in the Social Science Research Network online database, whose abstract of her paper is reproduced below.

A Broader View of the Immigration Adjudication Problem
Jill E. Family, Widener University - School of Law

Widener Law School Legal Studies Research Paper No. 09-02


Abstract:

Are too many individuals diverted from civil immigration adjudication? Each year, the government completes millions of diversions from civil immigration adjudication through explicit and implicit waivers, the expedited removal program and the increasing criminalization of immigration law.

By uncovering and analyzing this diversion phenomenon, this article exposes an important piece of the immigration adjudication problem that has been largely undiagnosed. While judges, scholars, government officials and practitioners have acknowledged serious problems within the civil immigration adjudication system, this article widens the view to incorporate the issue of whether too many are being sidetracked from the system altogether.

This article concludes that too many are being rerouted from the civil immigration adjudication system because some of the identified diversions are not true to the administrative process design criteria of efficiency, accuracy and acceptability.

The government should reevaluate its efforts to steer foreign nationals away from civil immigration adjudication under the four guiding principles proposed here: (1) not all diversions are bad; (2) government coercion, misinformation or a lack of information should play no role in the diversion process; (3) no-option waivers should not be implemented and (4) open-ended, prospective waivers also should not be used.