Pirate's Cove

And, I just have to say: “This is our problem why……?”

Deportation split Julie Santos’ family in 2001, forcing her husband, an illegal immigrant, to return to Mexico while she and their two U.S.-born children remained in her hometown of Chicago.

George Santos had worked and paid taxes in the USA for 15 years but is barred from ever returning because he used false identity papers to claim he was a U.S. citizen.

 

“He has said, ‘Continue with your life and forget about me,’ but I can’t,” says Julie Santos, 40, a real estate agent and secretary of the Latino Family Unity Campaign. She calls often and, whenever possible, visits him in Mexico with their 10-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter.

 

About 2 million families nationwide face a similarly gut-wrenching risk of deportation because the children are U.S.-born citizens but at least one parent is an illegal immigrant, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. If deported, the parent must decide whether to leave the kids with relatives in the USA or take them along.

Santos and others chose of their own accord to enter this country illegally. Julie chose to marry an illegal alien. They chose to have children. Now they, and the USA Today, want to play the sympathy card. Sorry, Charlie, er, George, but that don’t play in Peoria. Crime has consequences.

Do I feel for them? Sure, I’m not heartless. However, she could chose to emigrate to Mexico, if she really wanted to. Or go there illegally. Families are split all the time when one parent is sent to prison. Someone chose to commit a crime. This is no different.

Surprisingly, the article includes some interesting takes on the 14th Amendment, so, perhaps the USA Today isn’t all that biased:

Historians say the Amendment was ratified in 1868 to ensure the citizenship of freed slaves. “There’s no question” that it would have excluded children of illegal immigrants had there been many illegal workers at the time, says Peter Schuck, professor at Yale Law School and author of Citizens, Strangers and In-Betweens.

 

The amendment has been misinterpreted for more than a century, says John Eastman, director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence at the Claremont Institute. He argues that its authors, in granting citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States,” meant only those not owing allegiance to a foreign power, not simply those born on its soil.

 

Whatever its intent, birthright citizenship has been widely accepted as applying to all children born in the USA.

Perhaps it is time to either repeal or rewrite the 14th, to make this more specific. The time of slavery in the USA is over.

Schuck says Germany has had big problems because it has many immigrants, particularly from Turkey, living their entire lives there who weren’t voting citizens and felt alienated. As a result, he says, Germany and France have broadened their citizenship laws to include more immigrants.

Which is exactly what the Democrats are aiming for. They want a bigger voting block, rather then wanting to do what is right.