Social Security benefits for illegal aliens?

[keltic 1]

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.

i have not had the time to read this entire thread, and i do have to run out... but i feel that i can just add a little to this from my personal experience...

first of all, neonatal period is the first 28 days of life... so the odds are pretty strong that neonatal care for these babies is for a child who was born on US soil

and ET is absolutely correct about "tourism" children... i work in a center city hospital of a major US city... in the neonatal intensive care... the babies that i take care of are literally 'million dollar babies' due to the intensive care and technology required to keep them alive/help them prosper... i can not tell you how many babies i have taken care of that were born here of illegal immigrants whose entire purpose of getting here was to have their child be born on US soil... depending on which country they came from, they will either demand their childs birth certificate IMMEDIATELY (hahahaha talk to the state) so they can travel back to their homeland with their new USC child OR keep their child here with them for 2-3 months and then send the child back to the homeland to be cared for by grandparents/aunts while the illegal parents stay here and send money back to their family... the vast majority of these parents also dont bother even trying to learn or understand english, which makes explaining treatment and condition of their premature or sick neonate VERY difficult... also many of them wont bother to come to the hospital except to pick up their baby upon discharge

this is one issue that living in the real world and seeing up close has changed my views on... i think of myself as a very empathetic and humanitarian person... i would love to see everyone in this world with enough water & food to live on, shelter over their head in a safe environment, and medical care that will make life humane... however, i resent greatly that so many other countries and their citizens look to the US as the place to just give handouts... they should be working to make life better for their own citizens in their own countries...

and that being said, i feel that anyone who wants to come here legally and become a functioning member of society who wants to give back to this country and try to make it a better place for all of its legal residents/USCs, the WELCOME wholeheartedly... just dont come here illegally and leach off the system and send as much as you can out of the country to someone else... because that takes away from another USC/legal resident who works hard to deserve the benefits... and those other countries are sure not going to be sending their money/benefits our way... america is not endlessly bountiful, there are finite resources here... who will take all our citizens in when we wind up needing somewhere to turn?

[peezey 0]

If the US shouldn't be the center of medical care and expertise for non-USC, does that mean the US should stop insinuating itself onto the rest of the world as the leader of said world and arbiter of all that is democratic and free?

[Alex+R 0]

If the US shouldn't be the center of medical care and expertise for non-USC, does that mean the US should stop insinuating itself onto the rest of the world as the leader of said world and arbiter of all that is democratic and free?

Can't have it both ways.

[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.

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.

The influx of illegals in this country wasn't created in a vaccuum.

How much money did Archer Daniel Midland and other corporate farms reaped from the loopholes in NAFTA that dumped onto the Mexican market cheap, subsidized corn forcing small Mexican family farms, who'd been farming for generations into dire poverty? People say why didn't the Mexican farmers make sure that NAFTA was fair?...sheesh. Like a small family farmer has any lobbying power to form public policy.

This issues runs far deeper than Mexicans crossing the border for a better life. Focusing on them as the culprits is short-sighted to say the least.

Edited January 10, 2007 by Steven_and_Jinky

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

If the US shouldn't be the center of medical care and expertise for non-USC, does that mean the US should stop insinuating itself onto the rest of the world as the leader of said world and arbiter of all that is democratic and free?

What does that have to do with the issue at hand? The US is not the free clinic for the rest of the world and shouldn't be. That doesn't mean that the US cannot be the leader in new medical technologies and such. One really has squat to do with the other.

[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.

The influx of illegals in this country wasn't created in a vaccuum.

No shite. That doesn't make it right or less of a burden to this nation.

[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.

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.

The influx of illegals in this country wasn't created in a vaccuum.

No shite. That doesn't make it right or less of a burden to this nation.

So when it comes to finding solutions and addressing the problems, why is there such a negative focus on the immigrants themselves?

In other words, whatever financial burden they bring on to us (which is arguable in terms of dollars), why is the blame aimed at them?

I would think knowing your political leanings that you wouldn't anymore blame poor people for being poor. When assigning responsibility, how much is really on the shoulders of this country as a nation and its trade policies? Shouldn't more attention be focused on that?

[Caladan 19]

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?

Nope, it wasn't the co-pay. It was just the birth, though, not care beofre and after. Beyond that, it wasn't my finances, so I'm somewhat at sea. I'd still like to see the cite, though.

On your other point, I guess my point is that the aura of entitlement isn't always a bad thing. "My kid is American and should grow up American because look at all the opportunities he'll have" has probably kept us more than a few research chemists. They're not slumming it on welfare. If you're worried about birth tourism where people run up millions of dollars, presumably by flying here, having the baby and leaving us with the bill, the place to address that is at the point of entry or at the borders, I think, not by changing birthright citizenship.

"Birth tourism" seems to me to be different from "an illegal alien had a baby and it cost a lot." They're two different issues with different solutions. In keltic's example, if the parents are coming here illegally, having the baby, and sending it back home while they work, what does removing the citizenship do to their incentives? Wouldn't we still be stuck with the bill for the birth even if the kid isn't a citizen? (Can a hospital turn away a pregnant woman in labor?)

I guess what I'm not seeing is that having citizenship for the baby is an overwhelming reason to come here (one that isn't trumped, say, by the economic incentives.) And I'd rather go after the economic incentives before we trot out the blut in the boden stuff.

[Boiler 44,931]

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.

The influx of illegals in this country wasn't created in a vaccuum.

How much money did Archer Daniel Midland and other corporate farms reaped from the loopholes in NAFTA that dumped onto the Mexican market cheap, subsidized corn forcing small Mexican family farms, who'd been farming for generations into dire poverty? People say why didn't the Mexican farmers make sure that NAFTA was fair?...sheesh. Like a small family farmer has any lobbying power to form public policy.

This issues runs far deeper than Mexicans crossing the border for a better life. Focusing on them as the culprits is short-sighted to say the least.

There is a thread going on on another board about Au Pairs.

The bottom line is that insted of being a Mothers Helper, they are in the US looked upon more as a replacement for Child Care.

Quite a few of the parents I've come across in our area have the impression that an au-pair is a much cheaper alternative than paying for a full-time or live in nanny whilst they commute to do their long hours at work. In our area a daily nanny costs around $600-$700 per week for illegals who don't have a driving licence, legal residents get more.

And of course the people in charge who make the descions are the ones employing illegal nanny's/gardeners/cleaners etc.

Any society to function well requires to lve by a common set of standards, For some reason within American society there is a need for an underclass. Perhaps it is something deeply ingrained.

Slaves

Freed Slaves

Legal Immigrants from Ireland/Italy etc.

Illegals, mainly from south of the border.

and now "Guest" Workers.

There is obviously some dynamic going on that I have not been here long enough to fathom.

Edited January 10, 2007 by Boiler

[Boiler 44,931]

If the US shouldn't be the center of medical care and expertise for non-USC, does that mean the US should stop insinuating itself onto the rest of the world as the leader of said world and arbiter of all that is democratic and free?

To be fair this is self delusional American perspective that I have never seen shared elsewhere.

If Americans stopped it, all it would do is remove a source of amusement for the rest of us.

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

Any society to function well requires to lve by a common set of standards, For some reason within American society there is a need for an underclass. Perhaps it is something deeply ingrained.

Slaves

Freed Slaves

Legal Immigrants from Ireland/Italy etc.

Illegals, mainly from south of the border.

and now "Guest" Workers.

There is obviously some dynamic going on that I have not been here long enough to fathom.

It's the underbelly of capitalism run amok.

[Alex+R 0]

Any society to function well requires to lve by a common set of standards, For some reason within American society there is a need for an underclass. Perhaps it is something deeply ingrained.

Slaves

Freed Slaves

Legal Immigrants from Ireland/Italy etc.

Illegals, mainly from south of the border.

and now "Guest" Workers.

There is obviously some dynamic going on that I have not been here long enough to fathom.

It's the underbelly of capitalism run amok.

How is it different than any other capitalistic country? How is it different than the UK? (Actually asking, not rhetorical questions)

[peejay 327]

So when it comes to finding solutions and addressing the problems, why is there such a negative focus on the immigrants themselves?

In other words, whatever financial burden they bring on to us (which is arguable in terms of dollars), why is the blame aimed at them?

I would think knowing your political leanings that you wouldn't anymore blame poor people for being poor. When assigning responsibility, how much is really on the shoulders of this country as a nation and its trade policies? Shouldn't more attention be focused on that?

NO!

If the US shouldn't be the center of medical care and expertise for non-USC, does that mean the US should stop insinuating itself onto the rest of the world as the leader of said world and arbiter of all that is democratic and free?

NO!

[Boiler 44,931]

Any society to function well requires to lve by a common set of standards, For some reason within American society there is a need for an underclass. Perhaps it is something deeply ingrained.

Slaves

Freed Slaves

Legal Immigrants from Ireland/Italy etc.

Illegals, mainly from south of the border.

and now "Guest" Workers.

There is obviously some dynamic going on that I have not been here long enough to fathom.

It's the underbelly of capitalism run amok.

How is it different than any other capitalistic country? How is it different than the UK? (Actually asking, not rhetorical questions)

I do not think the UK has ever had this dynamic, there was never other than a tokenistic slave population.

There is an obvious class issue but that is a seperation within a contigous group. And as those differences have diminished there has not been a continuing replacement. There has certainly never been seen to be a "need", well apart from perhaps in the late 50's - and more recently with regards to Health Professionals. But most Society's have the latter problem.

To be fair the same could be said out most other European Countries. The Germans had their Guest Workers, but dispensed with that 30? years ago and will certainly never repeat that mistake.

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

Any society to function well requires to lve by a common set of standards, For some reason within American society there is a need for an underclass. Perhaps it is something deeply ingrained.

Slaves

Freed Slaves

Legal Immigrants from Ireland/Italy etc.

Illegals, mainly from south of the border.

and now "Guest" Workers.

There is obviously some dynamic going on that I have not been here long enough to fathom.

It's the underbelly of capitalism run amok.

How is it different than any other capitalistic country? How is it different than the UK? (Actually asking, not rhetorical questions)

It happens in Europe as well - they have an influx of cheap labor immigrants. Capitalism drives us to find the cheapest labor costs and the US of A has benefitted monetarily off the backs of Third World Labor. As long as profit trumps over people, an underclass will always exist.

I'm not advocating we throw out capitalism as a solution, but we need a social framework that ensures fair labor and trade practices and policies that provide economic mobility to all.

So when it comes to finding solutions and addressing the problems, why is there such a negative focus on the immigrants themselves?

In other words, whatever financial burden they bring on to us (which is arguable in terms of dollars), why is the blame aimed at them?

I would think knowing your political leanings that you wouldn't anymore blame poor people for being poor. When assigning responsibility, how much is really on the shoulders of this country as a nation and its trade policies? Shouldn't more attention be focused on that?

NO!

If the US shouldn't be the center of medical care and expertise for non-USC, does that mean the US should stop insinuating itself onto the rest of the world as the leader of said world and arbiter of all that is democratic and free?

NO!

Why not?