Today, there is much controversy in the U.S.A. about immigration policies regarding Deferred Actions for Childhood Arrivals or DACA. They are children of those who illegally entered the U.S.A. According to yourdictionary.com, the definition of illegal is a person not permitted to be in a country or an act that is against the law.
Clearly, it was not the children but their parents who chose to break the law to be in the U.S.A. While not always true, the chances are that these parents wanted to bring the children here at all cost – so that their offsprings would have a better life than what they had experienced themselves back home. These children’s only “sin” was that they were already born outside of the U.S.A. before their parents brought them here.
Under the current U.S. law, if these children were yet to be born, the issue of DACA would not apply. The law grants citizenship to all babies born in the U.S.A. or its territories regardless of the parents’ country of origin, gender, or legal status. It is called birthright citizenship. While 100% humane, such extremely lenient laws are bound to be abused by those who have either (1) no sense of right and wrong, or worse yet, (2) long-term evil intentions against the U.S.A. More on this a little later.
All humans are imperfect. All laws created by humans, therefore, are arbitrary and imperfect. As an extreme example, Nazi Germany legitimized killing of Jews. So we need to be mindful of any laws that a government decides to create on our behalf.
That said, for the most part, laws are created to (1) right the wrong and (2) keep order and peace among people. Let’s examine our law that grants citizenship to all babies born in the U.S.A.
The origin of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution goes back to 1868, after the Civil War (1861 – 1865). It was established to ensure that citizenship was granted to those African Americans and slaves who were emancipated after the Civil War, who were already residing in the U.S.A. This automatically included their children as well. As you can see, it was clearly intended to right the wrong of the past.
Such privilege, however, was never intended for those who choose to enter the country illegally. The U.S.A. does not owe anything to those who choose to enter the country illegally. Especially when they cause financial burden to the municipalities, funded by law-abiding tax payers, the existing laws must be enforced to keep them out.
Only a handful of countries give citizenship to children of illegal aliens and/or non-citizens. Just to give you a different perspective, here is an extreme-opposite example. I’m not sure if the laws in Japan have changed over the years since the early 1970s but, in contrast to the humane U.S. laws which protect all babies regardless of the legal status of their parents, the laws in Japan were stacked against a baby who was born of a Japanese mother, if the father was a non-Japanese. Read carefully: no Japanese citizenship was to be granted to that innocent, new-born child. In other words, if the non-Japanese father died before birth, that child could end up being without a country that he can call his own. If, on the other hand, the father was a Japanese, and the mother a non-Japanese, then the child was automatically granted Japanese citizenship. I would call this a case of blatant discrimination based on the gender of the parent.
The reason I bring up the case of Japan is to give you a glimpse into how laws in most other countries are nowhere near as humane as the existing law in the U.S.A. For example, as far as I have been able to determine, the United States is one of handful of countries in the world that grants birthright citizenship whereby any child born here, regardless of the parental status, becomes a citizen automatically. This came about because of a twist in the interpretation of the 14th Amendment. Then there is the issue known as Chain Migration where, once citizenship is established, a broad spectrum of immediate AND distant relatives become eligible to come to the U.S. legally and also eventually become eligible for citizenship themselves in the future; again, a rarity compared to other countries.
While the media and the left would like us to believe that the U.S.A. is the worst country on earth, those of us who come from other parts of the world legally know that the exact opposite is true on almost any issues, including immigration. Before you choose to blindly fan the flame of disrespect for your own country, check out the laws of other countries and make your own conclusions. Remember, you are given intelligence to make your own judgments on any and all issues.
