Harold Meyerson at the Washington Post takes a lead from our own Dennis G:
… On this page last week, my colleague E.J. Dionne Jr. rightly noted that by attacking the [14th] amendment, Republicans seek to undo one of their party’s greatest and most inclusionary achievements. Civil War- and Reconstruction-era Republicans took pains to ensure the citizenship not only of freed slaves and their children. They — in particular, Abraham Lincoln — also decided not to permanently keep millions of Confederate soldiers and sympathizers from regaining their citizenship.
__
The Confederates had renounced all allegiance to the United States. They made war on the United States — the Constitution’s definition of treason — and, in an effort to keep 4 million Americans enslaved, killed more of our soldiers than any foreign army ever did. Yet Lincoln was determined to make it easy for Confederates to regain their citizenship. By taking an oath to support the United States and its Constitution, Confederates were made Americans again.
__
Suppose, though, that Lincoln had been filled with the spirit of today’s Republicans. The crimes that Republicans ascribe to today’s illegal immigrants pale next to those of Confederate leaders and supporters (chiefly, treason). A Lindsey Graham-like Lincoln would never have let the Confederates regain citizenship. Moreover, he would have denied citizenship to their children and their children’s children. A large share of the nation, certainly of the white South, would have drifted endlessly in a legal limbo. The current Republican Party, anchored as it is in the white South, would scarcely exist.
__
So, the question for Lindsey Graham is: Are you serious about revoking the citizenship of 4 million children, their children and their children’s children? How about a package deal: Stripping their citizenship in return for stripping the citizenship of Confederate descendants. A sort of Missouri Compromise for our times. Bipartisanship in action.
WereBear
I find this awesome.
Is it really so hard for Republicans to follow any of their lines of thought to a conclusion? Really?
Tom65
Of course they’re not serious about it. It’s an election year and they’re playing to the only audience they have left: idiotic white people.
cleek
this is not 1865. illegal immigration is not treason. illegal immigrants are not former Americans. Lincoln was trying to rebuild the country as quickly as possible, not to stop people from sneaking across the border. etc..
it’s not really a great analogy. though i like the image of Lindsey Graham in a stove pipe hat.
p.a.
That’s change we can believe in!
me
Is Alexander going to have to apologize for this?
Dave
More of this, please.
Balconesfault
Sadly Meyerson is preaching to a Republican base who thinks irony is a vitamin suppliment.
The takeaway they’ll get from this is “liberals want to strip the voting rights of conservatives”
oh, and ACORN!
Villago Delenda Est
@WereBear:
Is it really so hard for Republicans to follow any of their lines of thought to a conclusion? Really?
Yes. It is that hard for them.
This has been another simple answer…
aimai
Its actually a great analogy, Cleek. Fights over citizenship: who has it, and who gets it throughbirth or other means go waaay back in history and they are always ugly. There’s really no technical difference between people who are denied citizenship because they are “outsiders” of some sort and people (and their children) who have it stripped away. I’ve been reading a lot of Roman history recently and the Social Wars revolved around just this issue. Roman Citizenship offered many priviliges but did not extend to Italians generally. YOu could become a citizen by being the freed slave of a citizen more easily than you could become a citizen being a high status Italian man, with many business relationships or even marriages with Roman Citizens. The creation of a second class status–look at our phrase “second class citizen?–is fraught with danger for the society that lets it get out of hand.
People have children. The one thing more certain than death and taxes is birth. Any change in this law will result in a huge and growing problem of undocumented and undocumentable individuals with no citizenship anywhere. Its a recipe for disaster and its actually been tried before, in Rome. I don’t recommend it.
aimai
4tehlulz
How did this get past Hiatt?
I expect an apology from the ombudsman shortly.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Great. I’d go back to being 3/5ths of a citizen again. ;-)
Dork
What if Mexico were to retaliate and strip citizenship to any adult found illegally living in the U.S.? Then what nationality would these kids be?
Also: knowing these kids are about to be deported should they be discovered, just how many “backroom” births (i.e., outside of a hospital) and subsequent disasters would this cause?
Comrade Javamanphil
The bipartsianship in action really makes the whole piece. I can just imagine the vapors it gave Broder reading that.
Punchy
How about a…er, um…package deal…. that involves stripping?
angler
The GOP’s motives here are as venal as they come, so lets get the historical analogy right. They damn well would have opposed the 14th amendment when passed because birthright citizenship was for black Americans, the people the Supreme Court, in 1857 Dred Scott, said “had no rights a white man had to respect.”
The wording of citizenship in the 14th Amendment blocked any effort to deny blacks equal protection under the law by unambiguously saying everybody who was born here is a citizen. The ex-Confederates hated it in 1868 and the neo-Confederates hate it today. That’s consistency.
bemused
Lindsey Graham, Tim Pawlenty and other R’s are blatantly using this to woo the wingnuts. Playing political games with the Constitution is sickening.
Chad N Freude
The beginning of Meyerson’s column (before the part quoted above) addresses Republican fear of a growing Latino voting population.
There’s more; click through and read the whole column.
cleek
@aimai:
no, it really isn’t great.
for example:
but former Confederates didn’t need the 14th to regain citizenship; that was handled with an oath and a declaration of amnesty. the 14th was about giving citizenship to the newly-freed slaves. it wasn’t about letting people come here to gain citizenship for their children. the situations are not at all similar.
it makes no sense to assume that Graham’s feelings about immigration are at all applicable to the Reconstruction era.
Dennis G.
This will give a lot of folks the vapors.
The idea of ‘tinkering’ with who can enjoy birthright citizenship is an old wingnut goal. Jack Abramoff worked with DeLay, Bilbray, Chinese sweatshop owners and others to make this change back in the 1990s.
The effort has and always will have a racist edge to it, but really it is about creating and maintaining a permanent underclass of workers without rights whose labor can always be stolen. When the children of these workers–be they slaves or Mexicans working in a meat plant or a Filipino Teacher working in Texas or Louisiana–have the rights of a US Citizen as a birthright then the system of labor theft is harder to maintain.
This underclass of workers drive down wages but drive up profits (and that is why the system exists). Ever since the end of slavery Confederates and other assholes have been trying to find new ways to steal labor. The attacks on immigrants, undocumented workers and birthright citizenship are just the latest iteration of this effort.
Good on Meyerson for calling out the Confederate roots of this effort. Let the outrage parade begin.
Cheers
MTiffany
Uhm, the world would be a lot fucking better off.
mclaren
Actually, it might have been a very good thing if the former Confederates had been forced to leave America. Same as with the people who disagreed with the American declaration of indpendence from Great Britain. Let ’em leave the country.
Northerners would’ve moved down south and brought a culture of tolerance and decency with them. We wouldn’t have to contend with toxic legacies like Newt Gingrich’s and Tom DeLay’s religious fundamentalist anti-constitutional federal-government-hating wannade-secessionist efforts to turn the entire United States of America into the Confederacy.
demo woman
OT..Handel conceded to Deal.. Pray for Barnes to win in November.
Frank
@cleek:
And so is Graham’s take on the 14th Amedment. He wants to ban citizenship on any illegal alien’s baby whose parent came here just to have the baby in the US for the sole purpose of obtaining US citizenship.
How in the hell does Graham intend to prove that the parent came here just to have birth for the sole purpose of obtaining US citizenship? As you put it, it’s an absurd stretch.
Svensker
@MTiffany:
?
cleek
@Frank:
Graham is an idiot. that cannot be denied.
soonergrunt
This whole 14th amendment thing is, more than anything else, a dog-whistle call to the birfers, and presumably anybody whose politics lie on that side, without appearing totally fucking crazy to the rest of us. It’s the republicans’ way of saying that once birthright citizenship is revoked, we can get rid of the nasty Kenyan Usurper.
Like the pervert on the subway, they’re trying to cop a feel on the nutcases while while no one’s looking at their hands.
cmorenc
I would be delighted to see the GOP dooming itself demographically within another dozen +/- 4 years or so with this red-meat nastiness designed to gain immediate thin-majority electoral advantage, if only they didn’t have such a powerfully demonstrated recent history of ability to cause such immense social, economic, and governmental damage over a fairly short time, both at home and abroad. It will take decades to heal the damage the Bush Administration and period of GOP-controlled congress caused during just six to eight years, and some of it may prove indefinitely intractable. What good will this future-emerging democratic majority be (even if it proves a good deal more progressive-minded than the electorate currently is), if the damage is so great that we’re starved for the necessary resources to pull it off?
Hope nonetheless lies in the examples of how well Germany and Japan were able to ultimately recover from immense, pervasive ruin in the next couple of decades after World War II. Only a wildly extreme pessimist would think there’s much probability of the United States sinking into anywhere near such a degraded state, unless perhaps large-scale war occurs within this country rather than merely in misadventures abroad, damaging though the latter are.
Davis X. Machina
@Frank: I was under the impression that the GOP opposed laws, like hate-crimes legislation, that required a determination of intent…
Sheila
Well, Annie Laurie, if you find a way to put your final suggestion into practice, count me in as a supporter.
GeorgeSalt
@soonergrunt:
True. All this 14th Amendment nonsense is nothing more than Birtherism 2.0
Robert
Pretty much any Republican “principle” can be traced back to money and politics:
1-Tort reform takes $ away from trial lawyers / democrats
2-Privatization takes $ from unions / democrats
3-tax cuts for the rich means more $ for the GOP
4-voter ID laws reduce democratic votes
5-culture war increases GOP turnout
Crapping on the Constitution by those that allegedly revere the Constitution is just another tactic to win elections.
Rethugs do not give a shit about principles. Their entire platform is based on getting / keeping power.
Sorry to tell you something you already knew…
jeffreyw
Pie filters are an abomination.
fasteddie9318
I often find myself wondering what the country would look like today if the federals had treated the defeated Confederacy a little more like Rome treated Carthage after the third Punic War. Most of the time, it’s a happy thought.
Kryptik
The result whole nonsense with the 14th Amendment, if they got their way, can easily be summed up with two words:
Stateless Children
JGabriel
One thing that strikes me about the advocates of torture, of ending citizenship by virtue of natural birth, of wholesale privacy invasion, and of the restriction or abandonment of constitutional rights in general, is always the insistence that, well, those were different times, the forefathers and authors of those rights didn’t have to deal with the problems we have today, the Islamoterrorists, the Hispanic hordes, etc.
How is it that they forget these rights, The Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment, were granted in response to war, not in some far off place like Europe or Asia, but war right here in these territories, against British invaders and Southern Insurrectionists?
For people who claim to love our Constitution, they seem awfully eager to ignore and change it, and for people who claim to love those who fought for the Constitution and our Nation, they seem awfully eager to ignore the wisdom borne of those battles and enshrined into law.
.
WereBear
The advantage there is in how their previous ruling structures were repudiated and replaced. With the Confederacy, we had no such luck, which is why it lurks and torments us to this day.
Kryptik
@JGabriel:
The answer here is deep down they are cowards. You see it in their hysteria and overreaction. It’s just masked by the constant projection they’re allowed to do through the media. Don’t want to outlaw all of Islam to stop the rampage of the Muslim Terrorist threat all around and within? You’re obviously a weak kneed politically correct sicko too pathetic to do the brave thing for this country and kick all them swarthy brown fuckers out!
They’ve successfully marketed their cowardice and fear as Bravery, and sane, measured diplomacy as the epitome of weakness.
stuckinred
From deep in the heart of Dixie
Handel was endorsed by Mrs Moose.
Anniecat45
I actually think the Republicans were wrong after the Civil War. I think the Confederacy was treated too kindly and so were the Confederates. Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, etc. should have been tried for treason and — if convicted — executed. Maybe a criminal conviction would have taken some of the air out of the overinflated “Lost Cause” mythology that still exists in the South.
Frank
@cleek:
The sad thing is that he is one of the more reasonable Republicans out there.
Irish Girl
Hey, wait! That’d mean I would lose my citizenship….my g-g-grandfather was an illegal Irish immigrant who fought for the South and later was granted citizenship because of his having fought in the Civil War. Wow……weird to think of it that way…….it would affect many, many lily white folks like myself……
stuckinred
@stuckinred: @Irish Girl: You’d be grandfathered in!
gnomedad
@jeffreyw:
Actually, it’s too bad pie filters can’t insert photos as well as text.
Comrade Dread
But- but- that would affect white people!?!
I’m pretty sure it would be:
a.) If neither parent is a US citizen, the child is not a US citizen.
b.) If the parents are naturalized waiting to take an oath of citizenship, the child is not a ‘natural born citizen’, but is granted citizenship with his parents.
c.) If the parents are here legally for work related purposes or travel, see a.
d.) If one parent is a US citizen, the child is not a ‘natural born citizen’, but is a citizen, and hence we can impeach the president for the crime of not taking into account the fact that he would be ineligible under our super special reading of the Constitution.
JGabriel
via stuckinred:
There’s no contradiction here. Corrupt is a feature, not a bug, for GOP nominees.
.
djork
Palin’s endorsement aside, Handel was more moderate than Deal. I weep for my state.
time to donate to Barnes.
mnpundit
Hahaha, he stuck a stick into a bee nest there.
The Republicans will NEVER stand for someone attacking their CSA fantasies.
jeffreyw
@gnomedad: Sounds like a good idea! Is Cleek the pie filter guy? Sounds like an excellent job for him. I know where he can get some pictures if he needs any.
El Cid
The insurrectionist (Confederacy) specific sections of the 14th Amendment aren’t about restoring citizenship, but barring the traitors from holding Federal office and denying any federal responsibilities for Confederate debts.
lushboi
Yeah, but the ex-Confederates were all white while the illegal immigrants are mostly brown. And really, that’s what this is all about.
Uloborus
@Kryptik:
Cowards always do. It’s the bully mentality.
@JGabriel:
Tribalist in-group mentality. One of its aspects is I’m Right And You’re Wrong By Definition. Goes well with narcissism. They don’t love the Constitution or anything else. Any argument that supports what they want to be true is automatically valid. Any argument that goes against it is invalid or just plain ignored.
This is the way humans think by instinct, but some of us have learned to overcome it. Inherent contradictions are not an issue. You guys severely misuse the term Cognitive Dissonance. Look around you. Very few people are bothered by holding internally contradictory opinions.
@soonergrunt:
Definitely part of it. There are no tricks too dirty to get their way, but they do want the external validation of being taken seriously.
@Dennis G.:
Sure. The upper classes of the GOP are definitely interested in maintaining a slave culture. Racism and xenophobia are also a factor. As is finding a loophole to officially invalidate Obama’s election. As is doing anything they think will piss off liberals. It’s grimly astonishing how many different asshole desires can all be linked together.
@cleek:
Ah, but immigrant workers were a clear issue in the original 14th amendment passage. There was bitching on the conservative (Democratic, teehee!) side about how it would make Chinese laborers and so on citizens. American Indians. And even with the black slaves, it comes down to xenophobia doesn’t it? They’re not whining about European immigrants. Mexicans are Other and don’t deserve to be Americans. Same with blacks. It’s about having a legal excuse to reject citizenship for people you don’t think are sufficiently Like Us. It was then, and it is now.
Right Wing Extreme
Honest thought here:
Let us not strip those who already have birthright citizenship. They were here when the law of the land said they get it (citizenship), and it would not be right, ethically and probably legally, to strip them of a right that the current interpretation of the 14th amendment says they get. However, I see no reason not to change the way that citizenship is conferred and use that way from some determined point and moving forward. I do not think we are stuck in an either or situation here. Any thoughts?
Uloborus
@Right Wing Extreme:
A) Not remotely possible. A constitutional amendment? Forget it.
B) How did Kryptik put it? Ah, yes. *STATELESS CHILDREN*.
EDIT – oh, and C) Why? It gains the US absolutely nothing. There is no illegal immigrant threat and never was. The entirety of the problem is people hiring them illegally and thus treating them in ways they can’t treat legal employees. All that stuff about drugs, welfare, violence, losing our culture – none of it’s in any way based in fact. So there’s no reason to change it to begin with.
Right Wing Extreme
@Right Wing Extreme: Why do you think it is impossible, please explain? I do NOT advocate stateless children. I will look for it, but another righty like me had a fair and reasonable idea based on a mix between German and Australian citizenship laws that would solve the anchor baby problem, would not allow for stateless children and would solve the problems we, the right, have with this whole situation. Additionally it would not allow for the President to be impeached, or any other nonsense, based on citizenship nonsense.
Uloborus
@Right Wing Extreme:
It’s impossible because you are a million miles from getting it passed. A constitutional amendment that everyone loved and was in no way controversial could not be passed in this political climate. It’s an enormous legislative obstacle – and is meant to be. And this is very controversial.
Particularly since at least half the country and more every day do not seem to see a problem that altering the 14th amendment would cure. There is no ‘anchor baby problem’. They’re not hurting the nation or the people. They don’t incite crime, they’re damn hard to ship back to homelands they don’t have, they’re not straining our social network, and the idea that there are large numbers of women who come to the US just to give birth to a child who’s a US citizen is absurd bordering on paranoid. It’s also damned insulting to good people who left their home country to make a better life for themselves and their families in a foreign land. Instead of finding some way to get them into the system so they can be regulated we’re allowing them to be exploited financially and persecuting them legally to ensure that they can’t become legal aliens. There is nowhere in this phenomenon that you will convince anyone who is not strongly right wing already that ‘anchor babies’ are a problem that needs a constitutional amendment to fix.
Mary
Of course they’d still let the Confederates back in. They were white, after all.
Right Wing Extreme
@Uloborus:
In principle I agree with most of what you said, but it is not germane to what we were talking about, except peripherally. We are talking about the narrow issue of how citizenship is conferred. If you want to discuss those issues I am happy too, and in some ways you have too because of the interconnectedness of the individual problems to the central issue. The issue here is that these children are being conferred citizenship just based on which side of the border they were born on.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@soonergrunt: This [squared]
Also2, why should they do any actual work when they can fap about legislative actions that will NEVER HAPPEN?
TOB
Did anyone else clicking through to the Meyerson article find the serendipitously placed ultra-WASPy Brooks Brothers ad, with tow-headed child and all, just next to the discussion of the GOP/CSA base’s makeup and the changing demographics of the USA? Priceless.
aimai
Cleek, that’s one hundred percent wrong. The amendment contains specific language on the Confederates:
Oddly enough this is why people are making the comparison. Because its right there in the plain text of the amendment. Plus it was the live issue at the time of the amendment.
aimai
Uloborus
@Right Wing Extreme:
Yes. I am suggesting that the left – the ENTIRE left, not just the more liberal fringes – don’t see that as a problem. Let them be given citizenship just for being born in the US.
That and seriously, a constitutional amendment is not going to happen.
catclub
The lack of insight into what repealing the 14th amendment
would mean is simply staggering.
The same people who fear that big government will put them in re-education camps for being politically incorrect, want to give that same government the right to determine who is a citizen.
The other paragraphs in the 14th include canceling any claims for reparations by slaveholders.
Repeal of the 14th is an effort to pay reparations to slaveholders. Framing is everything.
Remember Rush Limbaugh going on about reparations bills?
Projection!
catclub
@El Cid:
“The insurrectionist (Confederacy) specific sections of the 14th Amendment aren’t about restoring citizenship, but barring the traitors from holding Federal office and denying any federal responsibilities for Confederate debts. ”
This is the part the wackaloons really want fixed. The ones holding confederate bills would be rich! ha ha ha rich!
Barbara
Actually, just for comparison, there are places that have many residents who, essentially, have no country: the children of guestworkers in places like Kuwait. Born in Kuwait, they often speak Arabic and English, but speak their parents’ native language only a little if at all. They might technically be citizens of another country, but when they lose their dependent status they literally have no social context in which to thrive. Their only recourse is to become a guestworker themselves in that or another country.
How can you aim for repealing the 14th amendment, which is incredibly radical, but be against immigration reform?
Right Wing Extreme
@Uloborus: Sorry, I was on break. For clarification my last comment was on your edit. As for a new amendment you are right, at this time the issue is too hot, one way or the other, for a new amendment. I also get, and accept, that most lefties, not just the fringes, do not see this as a problem. What has caused the problem is that the 14th was intended to ensure that the freed slaves and their descendants were citizens and not residents. It is the more recent interpretations by the courts, and the less than clear intent in the wording of the amendment itself, that have made this an issue, that is now a white hot mess. The reason it is a mess is some of those issues that you say do not exist, such welfare, crime etc. that I do not want to get into except in how they relate to the issue at hand. Taken individually, the are small issues and not the anchor baby’s fault. Taken all together, these small problems are a huge burden on the system, still not the baby’s fault, but because the baby is here, the problems are brought into the country by some members of the family that either stay, or can now get into the country legally, because they are tied to that baby. The simple fact is that without the the baby, many of these undesirable elements would either not be here at all, or would allow the system a much greater range of options for dealing with them
Uloborus
@Right Wing Extreme:
Again: The left does not agree that those issues exist. We believe, and the statistics are on our side, that they are made-up bugaboos used by racists to justify their racism to people who merely trust the racists and are easily spooked.
Also, this is exactly what the 14th amendment was understood to do from day one. There was hot debate when it was passed because it would make guest workers, Indians, and other non-citizens in the US into citizens. This is not new.
Since you cannot fix the problems you see without amending the constitution, and amending the constitution is difficult even if everyone agrees, and everyone very much does not agree – it’s not going to happen. So we tend to view it as a hot air issue.
catclub
@Right Wing Extreme:
I think either Yglesias or Kevin Drum had a quote that the US
is the most successful nation in dealing with immigrants.
We are a nation of immigrants and that is our strength.
Busting the 14th is the first step to ruining that success and following a Failed European Model.
Why do you hate America?
Right Wing Extreme
@Barbara: I do not think that any rational person is asking for a repeal of the 14th amendment. I think the issue here is fixing the unintended consequinces that resulted from the language used in the 14th amendment.
Right Wing Extreme
@catclub: I will let the “Why do you hate America?” comment pass as the sniping it clearly is. I will also refer you to my comment numbered 68. I do not want to bust the 14th amendment. I am a child and descendant of immigrants. One of my brothers-in-law is an immigrant, and a middle-eastern Muslim to boot. I know in my bones that America is a nation of immigrants. I do disagree that we are the most successful nation in dealing with immigrants. The problem here, is that a loophole in the law allows for darn near anyone to become an American just by virtue of where they were born. This was no the intent for the 14th amendment, it was not the reason for the 14th amendment. The problem is that at this point only a new, and more clear amendment will suffice to fix the problem, and as Uloborus has said, that is not in the cards right now.
catclub
@Right Wing Extreme:
“I do disagree that we are the most successful nation in dealing with immigrants. ”
What nation does it better?
Right Wing Extreme
Australia seems to have a good system. And they deal effectively with anchor babies without creating stateless children. Germany and Ireland do alright as well.
Uloborus
@Right Wing Extreme:
I do like that you’re trying to be reasonable about this, but how can you have a discussion about solutions to a problem when we don’t think there’s a problem? None of your solutions will seem viable, because they’re impractical to pass and we don’t see them as improvements over the status quo.
catclub
@Right Wing Extreme: @Uloborus:
I tried to edit a previous comment and could not;
This discussion sounds just like those about Voter ID laws.
‘But it will cut down on voter fraud!’ Say the proponents.
‘There IS NO voter fraud’ say the opponents – who cite evidence showing essentially zero prosecutions for voter fraud. It is solving a problem that does not exist.
However, it does have the completely unintended and accidental consequence of reducing voter participation of people who predeominantly vote democratic.
HRA
Test
I found Firefox already installed at work. Problem is it has had the hourglass on since this morning. ??????
I did installed in my home pc and there is no hourglass problem.
Will check for any suggestions after I get home – about 530 or so. Yes it does take that long.
Right Wing Extreme
@Uloborus: I try save my unreasonablenous, (Bushism) for my own blog. I come here so that I am not in a vacuum. I see your point that if one side sees no problem, they will reject the quest for solutions under the “if it ain’t broke” principle. Partially it seems self-evident that there is a problem, so I guess what I am asking is, why is this not a problem to you guys, educate me? Granted the babies themselves are rarely a problem, but acceptance of the current condition brings a whole host of other problems with them. Before someone says it, no not in every case, but in enough that taken all together the various small problems add up to a big one.
Right Wing Extreme
@catclub:
There is clearly voter fraud, the evidence is everywhere each election, it is disgusting. Saying that there is no voter fraud because there are no convictions is the same as spraying a can labeled “Elephant Repellent” in my cubicle at work and saying that it works because no elephants have shown up in my cube.
Out of curiosity, why would anyone not want to vote just because you have to show ID or a voter reg. card?
catclub
@Right Wing Extreme:
“There is clearly voter fraud, the evidence is everywhere each election,” … and yet there are essentially no prosecutions by ambitious republican district attorneys. Why?
The Bush admin was begging for them to drum up cases and they still got nothing.
I assume the evidence everywhere is those two guys from the New Black panthers?
Any real evidence of large scale voting fraud?
Notice that I said essentially no _prosecutions_, and you turned that into no convictions.
“Out of curiosity, why would anyone not want to vote just because you have to show ID or a voter reg. card? ”
Let me know when those voter ID laws include supplying a valid ID with voter registration.
Did you know that some people do not have drivers licenses?
They are typically old and poor.
I think that additional ‘or a voter reg. card’ is not the problem. The problem is ‘valid ID’ and the voter reg card is NOT a valid ID – no picture.
KrisK
@RWE
Specify, please. Because we can’t prove the negative, “There is no problem” — only you can prove the positive “There is a whole host of problems that would actually be addressed in any way by changing the US Constitution. You have not done so.
What is self evident to some is that people like Graham, McCain, Rove and the media mouths know better — they know there is no real problem that this would fix. It is in it’s entirety a cheap and soulless stunt to gin up excitement on the right.
Are you born here? You are one of us. I start right there.
Arclite
To see how this might have played out, just look at one of our strongest allies and one of the most democratic nations in the world: Japan. Citizenship there is by blood. As a result, you have generations of people who live in the country who for all intents and purposes are Japanese: they speak, dress, and act Japanese, they follow Japanese customs, etc. but they must carry foreign passports. The worst group this travesty is visited upon is Koreans, as vast numbers were forcibly brought to Japan during WWII to work (among other things). When the war ended, so many had been living in Japan so long it had become home (not to mention the issue of returning to a decades-abused Korea after living in Japan).
The result of this is that these “Koreans” (and all foreigners) must carry around a “gaijin (foreigner) card”. They must maintain passports for countries to which they have never been and don’t speak the language. They can be deported. They are not citizens. They are discriminated against.
The law is changing slowly. Some are being naturalized. Some refuse to naturalize. It’s a complicated situation. But it didn’t have to be. If Japan had a law like ours, generations of ill will could have been mitigated (although not eliminated. There is some racism toward foreigners in Japan).
asiangrrlMN
@Uloborus: I am envious of you and your multiple responses. How the hell did you get six pass the moderator?
@KrisK: I back up this request. RWE, you keep saying that while the babies themselves are not the problem, and please, can we dispense with the term anchor baby?, the massive amounts of them add up to a problem, but you won’t define that problem. In AZ, crime has gone down, not up, but yet, they claim the hordes of illegals are wrecking the state. Everyone apparently knows this as well.
I keep using myself as an example. My parents met and married in Tennessee while attending grad school. Neither were citizens nor permanent residents. They intended to return to Taiwan to have kids and such after my father got his PhD in MN, but they ended up staying in the states. My brother and I were both born in MN. If you had your way, kids like us would not be citizens. Yet, my parents have both contributed greatly to this country, never took a dime of money from the government, and split time between here and Taiwan. They are now both citizens, but that took several years, of course.
My brother and I were citizens upon birth, but under your reasoning, we would have been put on indefinite hold until some indeterminate time for what purpose?
OK, so let’s say we are fine with families like mine. Then, you’re getting into intent. Will we question why every person is in the states and monitor each immigrant until s/he becomes a citizen or goes back to his/her original country? Talk about government intrusion.
I have to echo the others on this board and say most of the left finds the whole ‘anchor babies are ruining our country’ argument underwhelming, to say the least. This idea of citizenship at birth has been noncontroversial for decades, and now, suddenly, it’s a problem? Please.
P.S. When I use the term anchor baby, I am being sarcastic, in case that isn’t clear.
Right Wing Extreme
@catclub: No I am not talking about the New Black Panther guys. If I remember right, the term for their actions was Voter Intimidation, totally different issue. I was not intending to separate convictions and prosecution, for clarity I was using them interchangeably, and in all honesty, you can not get a conviction without prosecution. For starters there is the ACORN scandal, for clarity the one about election issues, and again for clarity, that was a voter registration fraud, but like convictions and prosecutions, you will rarely see voter fraud without being preceded by voter registration fraud. There was election fraud in the Coakley/Brown election in Mass., see here and here. Here is a voter fraud indictment in a LA city councilman election. Also Al Franken possibly had felons voting for him illegally, also a case of voter fraud if true, though since it does not matter now, we will probably never know the truth on that one. Large scale, not that I know about, but you did not specify large scale when you put the idea forward. My contention was that every election we get fraud all over the country. Yes, i agree that a voter reg card is not valid ID and for the same reasons, but a driver’s license is not the only form of ID. I do not think there is a state in the land that does not issue some form of picture ID, and I have yet to live in a state where it was all that expensive, usually around $25. I have been poor, at least in the typical American sense of the word, and I have always had some for of picture ID. If they are working poor they have picture ID, they have to to fulfill the requirements of form I-9. If they are not working poor, they probably do not vote so little to no issue there. As for the elderly I bet you a nice shiny nickel that they have some form of picture ID, so what is the problem? Additionally a voter reg card could be used if to register to vote you had to show ID in the first place. Granted it could still be used for fraudulent purposes, but it would likely cut down on the instances. Nothing is going to stop someone desperate to break the law, something in the vein of, “Locks are only meant to keep out the honest people.”
Right Wing Extreme
@KrisK: Uloborus specified some of the problems, and that was mostly what I was referring to. But to reiterate, the “anchor baby” is rarely a legal problem in the vein of drugs, violence, gangs, etc. The baby is just that, a baby, and can not commit a crime. Later when they grow up, that can change, but I do not think that issue is on topic at this time. The other issues are social, i.e. welfare of all flavors, jobs etc. Again this is not he babies themselves, but the family members that come with them. Individually the undesirable elements coming with each baby are likely small, but since there are usually one or two participants in the issues listed above,statistically there has to be, times all of the anchor babies, we are talking a real issue when taken all together in a big picture way. Just for the sake of argument let us say that each baby brings one criminal and one welfare recipient with them. In Texas last year there were 60000 children born to illegal aliens. that is 120000 criminals or welfare recipients, not to mention the free baby delivery to the poor families, just in one state. That is starting to sound like real money to me. In other states the number will be more or less depending on a variety of factors ranging from distance from a national border, to their minority populations. But when you take all of this together, you are talking real money. I apologize to anyone who does not like the term anchor baby, but I will not participate in pc nonsense and it very clearly separates this issue from other types of immigrants and illegals. In truth this issue is still the minor league. If the REAL problems could be solved, this would be a nothing that could easily be born.