Senators David Vitter and Rand Paul are introducing legislation to deny US birthright status, guaranteed under the 14th Amendment, to children born on American territory to "illegal immigrants."
What's missing from the proposed law - if passed - is that it needs to require the removal of Emma Lazarus's poem, written in 1883, from the pedestal (http://www.libertystatepark.com/emma.htm) of the Statue of Liberty. In "The New Colussus," Lazarus intones:
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
In fact, just remove the Statue of Liberty itself from New York Harbor and replace it with a giant "no vacancy" sign.
Vitter and Paul - two politicians with gargantuan contradictions - appear to have a perverse notion of "American exceptionalism," given that all residents of the Unites States - with the exception of Native Americans - are descendants of immigrants.
It's rather perplexing to espouse the self-serving concept of "American exceptionalism" when a key policy that makes our nation extraordinary is the opportunity and strength it has gained from being a beacon of freedom to immigrants from around the world.
Vitter and Rand would extinguish the welcoming light held aloft by the iconic symbol of America rising from the water just a short boat ride from Manhattan.
Were they to accomplish their goal, much harm would be done to our nation's torch of hope.
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Comments: 20
United States government is not a REPUBLICAN nor DEMOCRAT but rather an insitution called : 33rd DEGREE MASON and I hope people of United States of America will get it. Originally the organziation was all about WHITE ONLY
Now 33rd DEGREE MASON PRINCE HALL OBAMA is a FULL MEMBER OF by the way.
I think United States of America has to make clear any ILLEGAL may give birth in United States of America but via LEGAL means, not illegal.
Well, for craps and giggle, we can always dress up the Statue of Liberty in a hockey mask, pads, a huge stick and a jersey with (Jason) Voorhees on the back and for added effect, play the song to "Friday the 13th." >B-D
Seriously, we got to get control of our population.
Funny thing about that old poem. It does not say a word about sending people to enter this country illegally. We have always welcomed immigrants but these are not immagrants, at best they are illegal trespassers. The statue of Liberty opens the front door to this nation to legal entry. The back door needs to be shut tight.
The U.S. government center never ceases to amaze me with its pandering and impractical proposals.
Many countries are angling to get retirees, with special privileges of all kinds, and work teaching English.
Mexico and Central and South America have huge numbers of U.S. people, but nobody knows how to count them all. The richest ones go in legally and pay all the official fees and get counted.
Countless others do not do the paperwork and may snowbird back and forth.
Foreign nationals who get good training here used to stay here in very high percentages. Those percentages are going down.
MIT puts coursework on the internet so it can bait in the best brains it can find. Homeland Security started making it difficult to get the brains in, so MIT is branching out and working joint ventures to put learning centers off-shore.
I see this as inevitable, and other universities will likely do it also.
For a long time, U.S. people have figured out how to go around U.S. rules.
Who knows what to think of legislation written by special interests that is guaranteed to put normal people to sleep or into furious irritation, like some of the law written by the chemical and seed industries to force taxpayers to support its products against little farms everywhere.
The big U.S. press misses a lot of this. The government can be quite officious about its statistics, but there are economists who have made a career out of helping businesses figure out what the real story is, (John Williams of ShadowStats, for example).
It is arrogance to think that population only flows in to the U.S. The U.S. is becoming a place where children work offshore and send money home.
In popular lingo, it is called remittances, I believe.
The U.S. is jobs-poor right now, except for some highly skilled positions.
Laid-off people can sometimes move, to fill jobs in other places.
Brazil is hiring. It has to build facilities for sports events and gear up to receive visitors from around the world.
China is hiring because it is honest about what it does well and what it needs to learn to do better.
Some of our academics take jobs at incredible salaries in the Middle East.
Remittances do not go one-way any more. Some U.S. kids are sending money back to their parents in the U.S.
U.S. people often work incredibly hard, so Germany and China are siting solar-fabs in the U.S.
The U.S. government, or parts of it, are aware that the number of U.S. citizens in Mexico is far more than the official numbers the government of Mexico sends over, to track U.S. migration to Mexico.
The U.S. wants to limit how many rich people can leave, but poor folks are going to leave under the radar.
Allowing U.S. people to designate medical gatekeepers other than official M.D.'s would save enough money to take some pressure off our Illness Maintenance system. Fixing this incredibly broken source of tension has been something our politicians have been unwilling to do.
Displeasing big donors seems to scare even those who have been in D.C. close to forever. Yet showing back-bone while knowing it might take them out the door could be interesting. Maybe some in congress will rise to this, just for the heck of it.
Pleasing little-people constituents has the possibility to keep them in, if that is what they really want, and distinguishing one or two from the pack of how-high-to-jumpers.
Giving people more choices irritates monopolists, but there are only so many of those.
Enormous numbers of U.S. people have tried ancient, well worked-on methods of healing by exercise and healing with better diets. Some conventional U.S. medical practices are on board with this as well.
I met a best-practice-nag M.D. in a tai chi group when he was researching fall-prevention.
To get better health statistics, the U.S. needs much more of this sort of research, and it is possible for it to happen. Blaming outsiders for our internally-generated messes is counter-productive.
It was never meant as a birthright for illegals. We have quotas for each nationality. Come here legally, with your paperwork in order. Most all of our ancestors came through Ellis Island. Except for the many families that came before Ellis Island.
There are no guarantees in life and that includes citizenship. The 14th amendment needs to be clarified and IMHO it was never meant to be a birthright it was intended to give citizenship to slaves that were here.