Born in America, but NOT guaranteed citizenship?

I think the laws should be that the mother has to be a citizen of the US in order to have her baby granted citizenship. If she hopped the border, back she goes along with child. If possible, documentation of said mother should be that she can never even apply for citizenship.

The baby isn't punished in this matter. It isn't the baby's fault. So, if some day the baby (now adult) wants to apply for citizenship and follows the LEGAL procedures, by all means welcome to the United States fellow American...
 
We should have an ICE officer present, an American Consular present, and a Mexican consular present. Heres' the conversation. "You, are leaving this country. You need to first arrange for your childs citizenship. You can make him an American citizen, you can make him a dual citizen, and take him back to Mexico with you, or you can make him a Mexican citizen and bring him with you. Option 1 will only work if the current adoption system can handle it, if not, sorry. You can try the Mexican Consular to see if they'll let him stay in Mexico until he's old enough to come home. Option 2 will work, if we can get all the paperwork done between both parties. It make take a while. Option three is the easiest, you can sign these forms, and we'll get you and your family back home to Mexico by tomorrow morning."
 
There needs to be a visa program set up to allow workers to come from Mexico and fill jobs. No need to grant citizenship. Basic civil rights, basic benefits paid for from the money they are earning while legally employed under said visa program.

Until we address the fact that business needs these workers, and create a program designed to meet that need and manage the workers (who will inevitably come despite our best efforts), we are going to have this problem.
 
There needs to be a visa program set up to allow workers to come from Mexico and fill jobs. No need to grant citizenship. Basic civil rights, basic benefits paid for from the money they are earning while legally employed under said visa program.

Until we address the fact that business needs these workers, and create a program designed to meet that need and manage the workers (who will inevitably come despite our best efforts), we are going to have this problem.
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What you suggest is how they've been handling it in Europe for decades now, and with very good results. However, we'll have to get past all the political posturing here before we can actually begin to deal with it sensibly. Maybe after next November?;)
 
Here is one huge problem with the VISA system for migrant workers.

If a worker on a VISA gets pregnant and has a baby here we are back to the same old problem. No law dealing with work VISAs can take precedence over the 14th Amendment. Unless the VISA law does the following

1. Deport within 30 days of unemployment.
2. Immediately deport if pregnant (with 6 month mandatory testing).

I would never support it.

Of course I am one of those bigoted Americans who refuses to pay an illegal to do my lawn care. I'll be out there this weekend.
 
Why do we have to import an underclass to do work that we're not willing to pay Americans a fair wage to do? Those who advocate for and tolerate this "beggar thy neighbor" approach should ashamed.
 
It's not a matter of "importing an underclass." Americans have proven they will not do certain jobs, and with an entitlement system that penalizes people who are on the margin of poverty, why would they? In other words, I have heard of employees turning down pay raises and bonuses because to receive them would actually cost the employees in more taxes and ineligibility for certain entitlement programs (ie. student loans, WIC, medicaid, day care assistance, etc.)

Also, if you don't think an underclass already exists, you are living in a dream world. Your economic power determines everything from the quality of your health care, your food, and your home to how you are treated when an officer pulls you over for a traffic stop.

It boggles my mind that people decry giving jobs to those who are willing to work. If we, as a nation, didn't have an entitlement instant gratification mentality maybe there would not be a problem. As it is, lots of people are lazy, and would rather sit in their trailers popping bonbons while watching Springer, than get up off their butts and work.
 
JB, while some of what you say has a grain or two of truth to it, the fact remains that many (most?) people are not willing to work 10-14 hours a day for straight minimum wages (or near minimum), 6 to 7 days a week and no other benefits. None.

The above is a fact of life for the vast majority of workers (illegal or legal), in the single largest industry that employs them: Farm work. And depending upon the region, this work is only available for 6 to 8 months of the year. No unemployment benefits accrue. No vacation time. No overtime.

Heck, here in Idaho, it's only been recently that farmers were "forced" to pay workers comp claims. Got injured on the job? Tough. I suspect most States with a large farmer base are much the same.

I doubt you would be willing to work under those conditions.
 
Precisely. It's shameful to institute a new slavery using people some consider disposable. It's cruel and wrong to prey on desperation.
 
Cruel and wrong to prey on desperation? Baby, that's the way of business. Business is driven by PROFIT. An businessman who operates for any other reason won't be a businessman long. All the Norman Rockwell warm fuzzies aside, business is driven by PROFIT. Americans flock to businesses that provide the best for less. Why has Wal-Mart replaced virtually all of the "Mom and Pop" family businesses in small town America? Because consumers wanted a deal. Don't blame Wal-Mart, blame the consumers.

Employees (of any type from blue to white collar) have a sense of entitlement. They believe that by virtue of their work they are owed more than their wages. In fact, the more you give them, the more they want. You give them a bonus regularly, and they come to expect it, even when they have not earned it. When they don't get it, they become resentful. They put up none of the capital and take none of the risk, yet they want a lot of the profit.

You guys crack me up. You decry anything that even faintly has an odor of socialism, yet you think business should "care" about workers. When government wants to tax or regulate, people cry "foul."

And still no meanigful response to the idea that we can allow a large number of workers here on a guest worker program, provided they meet certain conditions. We can prohibit children born to these guest workers, while in the US, from becoming citizens. We can institute a European type solution. (and before some Brainiac points to the riots in France, those rioters were French citizens of a particular religious background).

Like it or not, no matter how much you want it, the solution is never going to be seal up the border and send folks back to Mexico. It's just never going to happen.
 
By that logic, the 13th Amendment was a mistake. Those worthless Americans who show insufficient fealty to the liege lord deserve to be cast aside. If they be wont to die, let them do so and decrease the surplus population? Lazy shiftless rabble. Don't pay people enough to buy your goods, beggar them, and if you can't, import others that you can do it to. Race to the bottom, see if we can out-3rd world each other. That will improve things for everyone.
 
We can prohibit children born to these guest workers, while in the US, from becoming citizens.
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Not without an Amendment we couldn't. The language is clear and even less susceptible to interpretation than the 2A, which most hear agree is crystal clear.
 
Fealty to the liege lords? Ha ha ha. I think the Dungeons and Dragons convention is down the hall....

Anyone who is lazy doesn't deserve handouts. There are appropriate times for the government to step in and lend a hand, but there are simply people who are unwilling to work. To throw it off on the illegal aliens because the "drive wages down" is a Springeresque "it's someone else's fault" argument. Look at the venues where there has supposedly been immigration reform and the local economies have plummeted. These folks pay taxes not only on wages, but taxes on everything from property to gas to groceries. Thriving immigrant communities usually bolster a local economy.

Business is about PROFIT. It's that simple. I'm not going to pay some lazy soft punk a high rate to do a poor job, when I can get quality work for less (and by less I don't mean subsistence wages). Work ethic matters.

And you still haven't addressed a SOLUTION to the problem: Business needs workers. These workers are not among native born Americans. How do you fill that need and what hould be the status of the children of these workers?

You can make all the clever Dickens references you desire, but ole Charlie never ran his own business and had to put up with the wheedling "rabble" that many of us employ.
 
Part of the problem is that we have been too sucessful

Look back in time, I know it is a difficult thing for many, especially those on the younger end of thing to think that anything in the past actually has any relevance to their lives, but try anyway.

Was there an illegal immigration problem in the past? And was it foreign workers "stealing" American's jobs? Were there jobs that Americans "won't do? Not really, or not much, if any. Look back to the Depression years, before there were social programs, and you will see that there were no jobs Americans wouldn't do, and for next to nothing for wages. Because the alternative was exactly that, nothing. Soup kitchens and churches meant few people actually starved to death, but beyond that, you had to work. Handouts were demeaning. Like unwed pregnancy, in those days if you couldn't provde for yourself and your family and had to accept charity, there was a social stigma attached.

Jump forward to the post war boom economy, and see the children of even those doing well working for their spending money. Summer jobs, farm work, paper routes and selling cookies. All this and more as an introduction to working class life. The parents, who remembered when times were bad, generally insured that the children knew what it meant to have to earn a living.

Jump forward some more, and see the children of the well off no longer working, but playing, using Daddy's money to go to college, and for their fun. See social programs, begun with the best of intentions, to help the poor, ballooning into huge entitlements, because even the poor have votes.
See wages and benefits fought over and won by previous generations of union workers now mandated by law for everyone.

Anybody out there know why businesses offer health care insurance for their workers? Anybody know when this started? And why? Today many people think it is their "right" as full time employees, but does anyone remember how it come about that workers got not only wages but benefit packages as well?

I'll give you some time to answer.

Foreign labor doing the jobs that American won't do? Yep. Kind of. They are doing the jobs that Americans used to have to do, and don't have to today. We have always used large numbers of immigrants in our labor force, the big difference today is that they can come here, work, send the money back home, and leave when they have made enough, or the work is done.

They used to say that the railroads were built on tea. Tea for the Irish immigrants who built the railroads from the east to the west, and tea for the Chinese who built the railroads from the west to the east. One big difference between then and now is that then, the immigrants stayed on in the USA, becoming citizens, raising their familires to be Americans, chasing the American dream, and often catching it. The people seen as a problem today are not immigrants coming here to live and work permanently, they are migrant workers. Migrant workers who don't assimilate into our general society. They don't need to. And because, as a group, they don't appear to try to assimilate, this breeds resentment among some here, while others go as far as they can to make things easier, so they don't need to assimilate.

Is it just because we are more understanding of others feelings today than we used to be, that we have a greater sympathy for the immigrants today than our forefathers did ? All the other non-English speaking immigrant groups were encouraged or even forced by our society to learn English in order to get along and to do business, but not those today speaking Spanish. All the ethnic groups had their neighborhoods, and their local businesses where their native languages were spoken as a matter of course, and still do even today, but only the Spanish speakers have made much of the US nearly bi-lingual. The western half of the US has gone farther on this route than the eastern half, but the influence is spreading there also.

While there is something to be said for helping people who don't speak English get along in the US, there is also a valid reason why people ought to learn the language of the country they live in, as much as they can, as well as they can, and as rapidly as they can. It's just the polite thing to do.

So, we have an immigrant (migrant/temporary/just visiting) workforce, many of whom do not speak English well, if at all, the feeling among large numbers of US citizens that they are "stealing jobs" and that their lack of English skills is deliberate rudeness, that even though they do work (and work hard) at the crappiest jobs for the lowest wages, many feel that they are taking advantage of our system, and being given preferential treatment and benefits denied to poor (usually white) Americans. No wonder it is such a touchy subject.
 
Not without an Amendment we couldn't. The language is clear and even less susceptible to interpretation than the 2A, which most hear agree is crystal clear.
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Evidently you haven't read the quotes from the chief architects and advocates of the Fourteenth Amendment which I have posted earlier in this thread. They were quite clear on the meaning of "subject to the jurisdiction thereof," why not take their word for it?

Senator Trumbull said:
The provision is, that ‘all persons born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens.’ That means ‘subject to the complete jurisdiction thereof.’ What do we mean by ‘complete jurisdiction thereof?’ Not owing allegiance to anybody else. That is what it means.
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Senator Howard said:
concur entirely with the honorable Senator from Illinois [Trumbull], in holding that the word "jurisdiction," as here employed, ought to be construed so as to imply a full and complete jurisdiction on the part of the United States, whether exercised by Congress, by the executive, or by the judicial department; that is to say, the same jurisdiction in extent and quality as applies to every citizen of the United States now.
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Can an illegal immigrant Canadian be drafted into the Armed Forces of the United States of America, for example? No? Then she is not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, according to the co-authors of the Fourteenth Amendment.
 
Importing third world labor in order to exploit it cynically relies on increasing socialism. In fact, it is an engine of socialism. Why should the almighty profit of businesses be provided by taxpayers and those businesses competitors. These businesses don't pay the actual cost of a factor of production, labor. The illegal immigrants still need food and housing and medicine, because we won't let them simply die, it's that empathy thing that some so blithely throw around and toss away when convenient or when they want to pot-stir. These outlaw businesses depend on the government paying for the medicines, for the food, and for the housing of those who can't otherwise live on the pittance they're paid. Those businesses are not bearing the actual cost of a resource they're using, we are. It is as if they forced the public and their competitors to pay for the light and heat bills in their factories. It is a cynical, thieving exploitation of not only the illegal immigrant but the American taxpayer. These businesses and others who hire illegal immigrants expecting them to be someone else's problem are criminals and should be treated as such. If they want profit, let them earn it by paying their own way.
 
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