Social Security benefits for illegal aliens?

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

I think you need to look beyond the idea of citizenship as something one must rightfully earn.

I think you need to realize that we can't have a world of 6 billion US citizens. A baby born to Mexican parents is a Mexican citizen as a baby born to German parents is a German citizen. Some may have the benefit of dual citizenship depending on the regulations around citizenship in their parents' respective countries. I don't see anything wrong with that concept. Why should there be an automatic entitlement to US citizenship just for being born on US soil? Other countries don't offer such ridiculous benefit and, co-incidentally, don't have the associated issue of burdening their taxpaying population with the cost of foreign nationals giving birth to anchor-babies either.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

I think you need to look beyond the idea of citizenship as something one must rightfully earn.

I think you need to realize that we can't have a world of 6 billion US citizens.

Sure we could. If took over the whole damn world

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I think you need to look beyond the idea of citizenship as something one must rightfully earn.

I think you need to realize that we can't have a world of 6 billion US citizens. A baby born to Mexican parents is a Mexican citizen as a baby born to German parents is a German citizen. Some may have the benefit of dual citizenship depending on the regulations around citizenship in their parents' respective countries. I don't see anything wrong with that concept. Why should there be an automatic entitlement to US citizenship just for being born on US soil? Other countries don't offer such ridiculous benefit and, co-incidentally, don't have the associated issue of burdening their taxpaying population with the cost of foreign nationals giving birth to anchor-babies either.

Listen carefully to what you just described. You're assigning citizenship rights based on being born and to who your parents are. Citizenship becomes a bit fuzzy when you have at least one immigrant parent who is here legal or not...so what if it's a baby whose mother is an illegal immigrant from Mexico, but the biological father of the child is a USC?

[Reynaldo 0]

Listen carefully to what you just described. You're assigning citizenship rights based on being born and to who your parents are. Citizenship becomes a bit fuzzy when you have at least one immigrant parent who is here legal or not...so what if it's a baby whose mother is an illegal immigrant from Mexico, but the biological father of the child is a USC?

Simple, give the child to the father and stone the mother....

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Listen carefully to what you just described. You're assigning citizenship rights based on being born and to who your parents are. Citizenship becomes a bit fuzzy when you have at least one immigrant parent who is here legal or not...so what if it's a baby whose mother is an illegal immigrant from Mexico, but the biological father of the child is a USC?

Simple, give the child to the father and stone the mother....

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

The sort of situation I'm thinking of is just akin to trying to get a SS number after immigrating legally. Tons of paperwork, clueless administrators, people who don't understand what's going on. I think someone's citizenship is too important to tie to whether their parents filed the paperwork properly, especially given the government's track record in these matters. This ignores completely the sorts of race and class problems bound to crop up. (e.g., are we going to offer the paperwork in Spanish? Are we going to require the parents to be permanent residents, or just legal workers?) Practically, we just have too much immigration to make this workable.

I also think the 'they're using their children to stay here!' argument is a red herring. Yes, it does happen, not denying that. But getting rid of this incentive isn't going to dampen significantly, imo, the incentives to immigrate illegally. Meaning that instead of having people stay home and have children there, they still come here (the jobs are still here), still have kids, only now those kids have access to nothing. You might be okay with that, but you're probably not okay with creating a permanent Hispanic underclass with no voting rights or safety net. That's just a recipe for societal instability.

Politically, though, I think this option is off the table. Suppose the magic immigration fairy waves her wand and gives citizenship only for legal immigrants. This doesn't do a damned thing to address the current problem, unless we're going to go about stripping elementary schoolers of their citizenship. It's not going to be retroactive.

Why making an issue more complicated than it is? I was not even talking about the children of illegal aliens even though that one is a no-brainer for me. I was talking about the baby tourism that is going on. And it's going on. I actually know more than one family (more than a handful, actually) where the pregnant woman came to the US for the precise and only purpose of having her baby here. Then she left with the infant to live with her husband in some other country. The benefit to the child is obvious - a world of opportunity down the road. And you and I pay for this kind of thing - somewhere in the range of 25,000.00 - 50,000.00 per birth I reckon.

If only children born to legal residents and US citizens were entitled to US citizenship, this type of birth tourism would stop at once.

That, by the way, answers the other question: Children born to legal non-immigrants will have the citizenship of their parents. That's simple and straightforward as well. I don't see any conflict or abuse potential there.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

I think you need to look beyond the idea of citizenship as something one must rightfully earn.

I think you need to realize that we can't have a world of 6 billion US citizens. A baby born to Mexican parents is a Mexican citizen as a baby born to German parents is a German citizen. Some may have the benefit of dual citizenship depending on the regulations around citizenship in their parents' respective countries. I don't see anything wrong with that concept. Why should there be an automatic entitlement to US citizenship just for being born on US soil? Other countries don't offer such ridiculous benefit and, co-incidentally, don't have the associated issue of burdening their taxpaying population with the cost of foreign nationals giving birth to anchor-babies either.

Listen carefully to what you just described. You're assigning citizenship rights based on being born and to who your parents are. Citizenship becomes a bit fuzzy when you have at least one immigrant parent who is here legal or not...so what if it's a baby whose mother is an illegal immigrant from Mexico, but the biological father of the child is a USC?

The child would be a US citizen based on having a USC parent. No problem there. And no fuzzyness. I highlighted the relevant part in my previous post for you. You must have missed that somehow.

[Caladan 19]

Until there's a paternity dispute.

There is some birth tourism. This is, as I'm sure you'll acknowledge, a wholly separate issue from illegal immigration. And your figure seems very high for a non-problematic birth. Do you have a cite for it? (A non-complicated birth at my hospital costs $900. A complicated one costs $14,000 (I only know this due to a friend's insurance drama with his two kids.) )

Most of the birth tourism I'm familiar with is very innocuous and not a taxpayer burden at all. Quite a lot of graduate students here, especially those from China, have children while in the U.S. Some of this is circumstance; usually their wives follow them, can't work or don't have enough of a grasp of English to work, so they decide to use the time while Dad is getting his Ph.D. to start a family (like many American couples do). The health care for the baby and mom are part of his teaching & scholarship commitments, so no taxpayer burden at all.

The baby now has dual citizenship, and the parents, highly educated people, have an incentive to stay in the United States and put that Ph.D. to good use here (by transitioning from a student visa to a work visa.) Seems to me this is a win-win situation.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

And your figure seems very high for a non-problematic birth. Do you have a cite for it? (A non-complicated birth at my hospital costs $900. A complicated one costs $14,000 (I only know this due to a friend's insurance drama with his two kids.)

$900.00? Where do you live? The hospital bills for the birth of my daughter (a scheduled and quite non-complicated c-section) along with the immediate pre-natal care (months 6-9) and the immediate post natal care added up to almost 30K. I reckon that throwing a complication or two into the mix would up that bill some?

The baby now has dual citizenship, and the parents, highly educated people, have an incentive to stay in the United States and put that Ph.D. to good use here (by transitioning from a student visa to a work visa.) Seems to me this is a win-win situation.

That dog don't hunt. The parents have just as much an incentive to stay here if the child was not a US citizen. Any employment based immigration benefit the parents you put forth here would acquire in order to stay here will afford the child legal status as well. If the parents (one of them, really) pursue employment based residency down the line, the same benefit is bestowed upon the child. And once the parent(s) naturalize, so does the child. The US citizenship of the child, on the other hand, doesn't earn the parents anything in terms of a right to stay and work here. All it does is feeding an aura of entitlement to stay here with the child in what is now the child's "native" country.

[Boiler 45,160]

And your figure seems very high for a non-problematic birth. Do you have a cite for it? (A non-complicated birth at my hospital costs $900. A complicated one costs $14,000 (I only know this due to a friend's insurance drama with his two kids.)

$900.00? Where do you live? The hospital bills for the birth of my daughter (a scheduled and quite non-complicated c-section) along with the immediate pre-natal care (months 6-9) and the immediate post natal care added up to almost 30K. I reckon that throwing a complication or two into the mix would up that bill some?

The baby now has dual citizenship, and the parents, highly educated people, have an incentive to stay in the United States and put that Ph.D. to good use here (by transitioning from a student visa to a work visa.) Seems to me this is a win-win situation.

That dog don't hunt. The parents have just as much an incentive to stay here if the child was not a US citizen. Any employment based immigration benefit the parents you put forth here would acquire in order to stay here will afford the child legal status as well. If the parents (one of them, really) pursue employment based residency down the line, the same benefit is bestowed upon the child. And once the parent(s) naturalize, so does the child. The US citizenship of the child, on the other hand, doesn't earn the parents anything in terms of a right to stay and work here. All it does is feeding an aura of entitlement to stay here with the child in what is now the child's "native" country.

I was thinking prety much the same. I can only imagine that the $900 was the co-pay?

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I think you need to look beyond the idea of citizenship as something one must rightfully earn.

I think you need to realize that we can't have a world of 6 billion US citizens. A baby born to Mexican parents is a Mexican citizen as a baby born to German parents is a German citizen. Some may have the benefit of dual citizenship depending on the regulations around citizenship in their parents' respective countries. I don't see anything wrong with that concept. Why should there be an automatic entitlement to US citizenship just for being born on US soil? Other countries don't offer such ridiculous benefit and, co-incidentally, don't have the associated issue of burdening their taxpaying population with the cost of foreign nationals giving birth to anchor-babies either.

Listen carefully to what you just described. You're assigning citizenship rights based on being born and to who your parents are. Citizenship becomes a bit fuzzy when you have at least one immigrant parent who is here legal or not...so what if it's a baby whose mother is an illegal immigrant from Mexico, but the biological father of the child is a USC?

The child would be a US citizen based on having a USC parent. No problem there. And no fuzzyness. I highlighted the relevant part in my previous post for you. You must have missed that somehow.

So then what do want to do about the mother? Deport her? Separate the child from the mother? That's the fuzzy part. It's not so cut and dry, especially when you place rights of citizens dependent on the parent's citizenship.

My point is - there's no easy solutions.

Edited January 10, 2007 by Steven_and_Jinky

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

I think you need to look beyond the idea of citizenship as something one must rightfully earn.

I think you need to realize that we can't have a world of 6 billion US citizens. A baby born to Mexican parents is a Mexican citizen as a baby born to German parents is a German citizen. Some may have the benefit of dual citizenship depending on the regulations around citizenship in their parents' respective countries. I don't see anything wrong with that concept. Why should there be an automatic entitlement to US citizenship just for being born on US soil? Other countries don't offer such ridiculous benefit and, co-incidentally, don't have the associated issue of burdening their taxpaying population with the cost of foreign nationals giving birth to anchor-babies either.

Listen carefully to what you just described. You're assigning citizenship rights based on being born and to who your parents are. Citizenship becomes a bit fuzzy when you have at least one immigrant parent who is here legal or not...so what if it's a baby whose mother is an illegal immigrant from Mexico, but the biological father of the child is a USC?

The child would be a US citizen based on having a USC parent. No problem there. And no fuzzyness. I highlighted the relevant part in my previous post for you. You must have missed that somehow.

So then what do want to do about the mother? Deport her? Separate the child from the mother? That's the fuzzy part. It's not so cut and dry, especially when you place rights of citizens dependent on the parent's citizenship.

My point is - there's no easy solutions.

Still nothing fuzzy. If the mother is an illegal alien, she would face deportation. Whether that means separation from the child or husband or both is up for the family to decide. It's the parents that got themselves into the situation and I don't see why America needs to bail them out.

ETA: It's that 'aura of entitlement' I was just talking about...

Edited January 10, 2007 by ET-US2004

[Boiler 45,160]

I think you need to look beyond the idea of citizenship as something one must rightfully earn.

I think you need to realize that we can't have a world of 6 billion US citizens. A baby born to Mexican parents is a Mexican citizen as a baby born to German parents is a German citizen. Some may have the benefit of dual citizenship depending on the regulations around citizenship in their parents' respective countries. I don't see anything wrong with that concept. Why should there be an automatic entitlement to US citizenship just for being born on US soil? Other countries don't offer such ridiculous benefit and, co-incidentally, don't have the associated issue of burdening their taxpaying population with the cost of foreign nationals giving birth to anchor-babies either.

Listen carefully to what you just described. You're assigning citizenship rights based on being born and to who your parents are. Citizenship becomes a bit fuzzy when you have at least one immigrant parent who is here legal or not...so what if it's a baby whose mother is an illegal immigrant from Mexico, but the biological father of the child is a USC?

The child would be a US citizen based on having a USC parent. No problem there. And no fuzzyness. I highlighted the relevant part in my previous post for you. You must have missed that somehow.

So then what do want to do about the mother? Deport her? Separate the child from the mother? That's the fuzzy part. It's not so cut and dry, especially when you place rights of citizens dependent on the parent's citizenship.

My point is - there's no easy solutions.

The Mpther should be deported obviously.

I would certainly not seperate the mother and child, this is a free society and both the father and child are not restricted in their right of travel.

Last time I checked the US does not require travel permits, you make it sound like we live in a Stalinist state.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I think you need to look beyond the idea of citizenship as something one must rightfully earn.

I think you need to realize that we can't have a world of 6 billion US citizens. A baby born to Mexican parents is a Mexican citizen as a baby born to German parents is a German citizen. Some may have the benefit of dual citizenship depending on the regulations around citizenship in their parents' respective countries. I don't see anything wrong with that concept. Why should there be an automatic entitlement to US citizenship just for being born on US soil? Other countries don't offer such ridiculous benefit and, co-incidentally, don't have the associated issue of burdening their taxpaying population with the cost of foreign nationals giving birth to anchor-babies either.

Listen carefully to what you just described. You're assigning citizenship rights based on being born and to who your parents are. Citizenship becomes a bit fuzzy when you have at least one immigrant parent who is here legal or not...so what if it's a baby whose mother is an illegal immigrant from Mexico, but the biological father of the child is a USC?

The child would be a US citizen based on having a USC parent. No problem there. And no fuzzyness. I highlighted the relevant part in my previous post for you. You must have missed that somehow.

So then what do want to do about the mother? Deport her? Separate the child from the mother? That's the fuzzy part. It's not so cut and dry, especially when you place rights of citizens dependent on the parent's citizenship.

My point is - there's no easy solutions.

Still nothing fuzzy. If the mother is an illegal alien, she would face deportation. Whether that means separation from the child or husband or both is up for the family to decide. It's the parents that got themselves into the situation and I don't see why America needs to bail them out.

That's if you look at illegal immigration as a punitive crime which I do not. I can see problems with illegal immigration, but I don't look at it as criminal behavior, but more of a socio-economic problem. I'm not worried that by allowing that mother to stay here and be with her family is going to jeopardize the safety of myself or my fellow countrymen. I also don't believe that she will become a burden to society as the facts show otherwise.

Separate a mother from her child would be a heartless thing to do and I don't see how society would benefit from taking such a harsh stance on her illegal immigration.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

I think you need to look beyond the idea of citizenship as something one must rightfully earn.

I think you need to realize that we can't have a world of 6 billion US citizens. A baby born to Mexican parents is a Mexican citizen as a baby born to German parents is a German citizen. Some may have the benefit of dual citizenship depending on the regulations around citizenship in their parents' respective countries. I don't see anything wrong with that concept. Why should there be an automatic entitlement to US citizenship just for being born on US soil? Other countries don't offer such ridiculous benefit and, co-incidentally, don't have the associated issue of burdening their taxpaying population with the cost of foreign nationals giving birth to anchor-babies either.

Listen carefully to what you just described. You're assigning citizenship rights based on being born and to who your parents are. Citizenship becomes a bit fuzzy when you have at least one immigrant parent who is here legal or not...so what if it's a baby whose mother is an illegal immigrant from Mexico, but the biological father of the child is a USC?

The child would be a US citizen based on having a USC parent. No problem there. And no fuzzyness. I highlighted the relevant part in my previous post for you. You must have missed that somehow.

So then what do want to do about the mother? Deport her? Separate the child from the mother? That's the fuzzy part. It's not so cut and dry, especially when you place rights of citizens dependent on the parent's citizenship.

My point is - there's no easy solutions.

Still nothing fuzzy. If the mother is an illegal alien, she would face deportation. Whether that means separation from the child or husband or both is up for the family to decide. It's the parents that got themselves into the situation and I don't see why America needs to bail them out.

That's if you look at illegal immigration as a punitive crime which I do not. I can see problems with illegal immigration, but I don't look at it as criminal behavior, but more of a socio-economic problem. I'm not worried that by allowing that mother to stay here and be with her family is going to jeopardize the safety of myself or my fellow countrymen. I also don't believe that she will become a burden to society as the facts show otherwise.

Separate a mother from her child would be a heartless thing to do and I don't see how society would benefit from taking such a harsh stance on her illegal immigration.

Again, I have not and will not advocate the separation of a mother from her child. If a mother that is to be deported decides to leave her USC child in the care of a USC or legal resident, then that's the mother's decision not mine. So, if the mother decides to do so, then you can call her heartless.

The overall benefit of illegal aliens to this country is something that I fail to see. Care to back up how and why illegal aliens are not a burden on this nation? $10,000,000,000.00 / year in net cost is a figure that I have memorized somehow. And it seems like a fairly reasonable figure to me. How that is not a burden is beyond me.