Tuesday, July 19, 2011

The Anchor Baby Myth


Immigration has become a hotly contested issue with strong feeling on each side. Unfortunately, we have allowed our emotions to get the best of us, at the expense of an honest debate. No where is this more clear than with the recent coining of the phrase anchor babies. The term anchor baby refers to a mother who takes advantage of our countries long-standing belief in birth right citizenship by sneaking across the border and having her child here. Birth right citizenship is the Constitutional guarantee that when a person is born within the US they are automatically a citizen, even if their parents entered illegally.
The term anchor baby was created to infer that illegal immigrants have found a way around our immigration laws by having a baby here, who is now a citizen. As a citizen it is falsely claimed that this anchor baby subsequently petitions to bring the rest of the family here. It is implied that once here this family will now take jobs from US citizens or go on welfare and take our tax dollars. The term anchor baby is simply a myth, created to stir up anti immigrant ideology for political gain. The truth is a US citizen baby cannot help an illegal parent’s immigration. This is because no one can petition for another family member’s green card until they are 21 years old.

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