Voice For Voters

By Elois Zeanah

Consider this scenario:   

Put yourself in the shoes of a Mexican citizen still living in Mexico.  One day you get a phone call from friends and family in the U.S.  They’re having a party and invite you to join them in the U.S.  They tell you that you can make more in one hour than you can make in one day in Mexico.   

Then amidst all the party clatter at the other end of the phone, your callers drop the piñata of all surprises.  They tell you that not only can you make more in an hour than in a day in Mexico – but that the U.S. will pay you richly to come to the U.S. as an illegal alien and have a baby. 

At this point, you don’t know whether the loud party at the other end of the phone is out of control and your friends are weaving fantasy, or to put on your running shoes and become the latest illegal alien. 

Still holding the phone, you ask in disbelief, “The U.S. does what?” 

“Yes,” the answer comes back, “it’s true.  The U.S. makes it easy to cross the border, easy to find jobs, and the U.S. pays us to have babies.” 

Your friends at the other end of the phone drop another surprise:  When your anchor baby turns 18, you become a U.S. citizen – unless you get amnesty first!  If you were that Mexican, what would you do?  Is birthright citizenship not an irresistible magnet?

If I’ve gotten your attention, please (1) read the articles on this website and learn about the problem of birthright citizenship which is one of the most urgent issues of illegal immigration that needs to be addressed, and (2) check the website below to see if your U.S. Representatives have co-sponsored this legislation.  If not, please call his/her office and request that he/she do so.          Check http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-1868 to read H.R. 1868, who the sponsor and co-sponsors are, and what the status is.       

Babies born to illegal parents in the United States are called “anchor babies” because they automatically become U.S. citizens and immediately “anchor” their illegal families to free federal, state, and local benefits.  By law, illegal aliens cannot get free public benefits.  But illegal aliens can use their children born in the U.S. to evade our laws and get them anyway.  This is why “anchor babies” are also called “jackpot babies”.

These benefits include public housing and rent assistance, food stamps, free education and school lunches, Medicaid, SSI, unemployment benefits, Earned Income Tax Credit, and other public assistance.  And the prizes keep coming.  In addition to free benefits, illegal parents get U.S. citizenship when their anchor baby turns 18.  Not bad rewards for entering the U.S. illegally!

A few facts:  There are over 3 million anchor babies in the U.S. today.  Approximately 400,000 new anchor babies are born each year.  One of every 10 births in the U.S. is an anchor baby.  45% are born to unwed Mexican teenagers.  65% of these lack a high school education.  Anchor babies cost taxpayers up to an estimated $100 billion each year.

$100 billion a year is astronomical.  But if amnesty passes, this will sound like pennies.  Studies reveal that government today spends over $300 billion each  year on welfare for Mexican households – both legal and illegal.  Undoubtedly, many if not most of legal Mexican households are a result of amnesty 20 years ago.

Today, 58.8% of legal Mexican households receive welfare.  And today, a higher percentage of illegal aliens households receive U.S. welfare than our own citizen households.  The United States is not alone in suffering from the new economic realities of immigration.  Other countries have suffered the same problems.  The difference is, other countries banned automatic citizenship years ago.

RESOURCES:  (1) Center for Immigration Studies, “Use of Means-Tested Programs”.  (2) International Herald Tribune, The New York Times, May 6-7, 2006:  “Germany recognizes its face is changing.”  (3)  In 2005.  The number is higher now.  Pew Hispanic Center,  “Unauthorized Migrants, Numbers and Characteristics,” 6-14-05.  (4) CIS “Immigration’s Impact on Public Coffers,” Testimony Prepared for the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims on August 24, 2006 by Steven A. Camarota, Director of Research, Center for Immigration Studies.  (5)  1999  (6) “Use of Means-Tested Programs,” Immigration from Mexico:  Assessing the Impact on the United States, by Steven A. Camarota.

Some parents of anchor babies come from South Korea.  Women are told how to vacation to the U.S. when pregnant, how to get all their medical care free, how to stay permanently, and how to take advantage of the generous humanitarian aid we know as welfare.

Some parents of anchor babies are radical Muslims who live in the U.S. illegally.

In fact, anyone who is not a U.S. citizen and has a child born in the U.S., regardless of the reason they are in the U.S. or how long they have been in the U.S., is the parent of an anchor baby.  The only exception is children born to diplomats.

Most parents of anchor babies, however, come from Mexico.

The federal budget affects the family budget.  What government spends to support illegal aliens, families pay for.   

The Heritage Foundation calculates that the net cost to American families to subsidize low-skill immigrants is $20,000 per year per household.[1]  Who says immigrant work is CHEAP?  

For fun, let’s compare the costs of welfare to warfare.  The author of “The Price of Liberty,” Dr. Robert Hormant points out the hypocrisy of the pro-illegal immigration lobby which opposes funding the war in Iraq.  They complain that the war takes money from social programs to help our needy. Yet they fail to recognize that the costs of welfare to fund illegal immigration takes billions of dollars every year away from the U.S. poor and gives it to Mexico’s poor. 

The author of “Price of Liberty” points out that despite the cost of the Iraq war through 2015, which he predicts will approximate $2.6 trillion, that “The debts that currently menace posterity are the consequences not of warfare but of welfare.”   

Importantly, costs for free services to illegal aliens is probably the biggest contributor to the funding crises in education, entitlement programs, healthcare and the federal deficit. Do Washington politicians acknowledge this?  They know.  Yet, how often do they cry that there is a crisis in health care, in welfare, in Social Security, and with the federal deficit?  And, of course, this cry is always “code” to raise taxes, isn’t it?   

The truth is:  If the U.S. would ban automatic citizenship for children born to illegal aliens, the U.S. would get rid of a powerful magnet for illegal immigration and, at the same time, solve funding crises in all these programs – without tax increases.

No presidential candidate can truthfully say he cares about family values, low taxes, welfare reform, improving education, reducing the federal deficit, and solving problems of healthcare and Social Security if he does not support banning automatic citizenship for children of illegal immigrants.     

Everything associated with illegal immigration including birthright citizenship goes against conservative values of being tough on crime, fiscally responsible, protecting America’s sovereignty, keeping taxes low and the bureaucracy in tow. 

RESOURCES:  [1] Robert Rector writes, “Low-skill immigrant households receive, on average, $30,160 per year in government benefits while paying $10,573 in taxes.  Thus each such household costs the taxpayer a net of about $19,588 per year.”  [2] Homats is the current managing director of Goldman, Sacks & Co.  Estimates for spending on the war in Iraq from 2003 to 2015 is $2.2 trillion.  

Since it is against U.S. laws that illegal aliens cannot receive free public benefits, how, then, are they able to use their children born in the U.S. to get around our laws and get free benefits anyway? 

The U.S. Congress never voted to make children of illegal aliens born in the U.S. citizens.  The U.S. Supreme Court never ruled that children of illegal aliens are U.S. citizens.  Bureaucrats made this decision.  Bureaucrats did this through a misinterpretation and misapplication of the 14th Amendment. 

According to some analysts, free benefits to low-skill immigrants will bring insolvency to an already over-subscribed welfare-healthcare-Social Security system. 

To bring this reality closer to home, Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation calculates that the net cost to American families to subsidize low-skill immigrants is about $20,000 per household per year. Payments by U.S. taxpayers to subsidize illegal aliens undermines the safety-net programs set up to help our own poor. 

The U.S. still has not solved the problem of how to end the cycle of poverty for poor U.S. citizens.  Is there not an economic limit to the number of poor that taxpayers can support without a meltdown of the Middle Class and without bankrupting our country? 

If we as Americans and as a nation are going to be fiscally responsible and maintain our economic security, must we not consider the short-term strains of importing additional poverty and the long-term economic consequences that could be disastrous?

Federal law requires that illegal aliens receive free emergency health care and free education.  But federal law prohibits illegal aliens from receiving other free public benefits.  Yet bureaucrats made the decision without the knowledge or consent or citizens and without a vote of Congress to give illegal aliens a loophole to evade this law. 

H.R. 1940 was introduced in Congress in April 2007 to overturn the expanded definition of “citizen” by bureaucrats and to close this loophole.  Passage of H.R. 1940 would be a giant step to rein in runaway bureaucracy and stop out-of-control spending, as well as to get rid of a huge economic magnet that attracts illegal immigration. 

What can we do as individuals?  Voters can insist that Congress overturn the misapplication of the 14th Amendment and reinstate the intent of the 14th Amendment to ban automatic citizenship for children of non-citizens.  

Other countries banned automatic birthright citizenship years ago because of the same problems the U.S. faces today.  Isn’t it past time the U.S. did also?

For more information on the 14th Amendment, see the related discussion on this website on this subject.