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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

The trans thing is something I don't get. It's a non issue. Make all bathrooms unisex. Any one can use any bathroom. In the end women get more access to bathrooms than they do now. Stick a couple of urinals here and there.

When people get into a country illegally, they know it's illegal. They know the consequences (for themselves and any dependents), but they hope they will not get caught and do it anyway, so it's hard to see it as if the state "did this" to them. I've seen this in China, Japan, etc. They know any day could be their last. Many had to have their friends sell their belongings for them because in those places you may have a week at most to get out.

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Most undocumented immigrants are people who overstay an original visa. The reasons for people being in places are rarely simple.

Moreover, whatever you have to say about the parents, the children are American citizens, with all the rights and privileges our grandparents fought World War 2 to preserve. If their families are to be torn up, there needs to be a better reason than lack of immigration paperwork.

Not to belabor the point, but most children of illegal immigrants are dual citizens --US and their parents' home country.

However, the administration should consider these a lower priority but should enforce immigration policy so that we do not have as many of these cases come up. Basically continue the Obama approach but with better border security.

What on Earth does it matter that they have dual citizenships? They've known no other home but the United States --- their actual home country --- and even if that weren't true, they're American citizens.

A "lower priority"? Shouldn't it be the opposite: the priority being that we don't tear up the families of our countrymen over paperwork issues?

Lower enforcement priority. That is may not even get to addressing them from a legal perspective.

I mention it because some people think "Oh, we're throwing the parents of American citizens out" --no it's the parents of someone who both hold foreign as well as American citizenship. So one could as equally say they're deporting the parents of a Serbian or Brazilian citizen, but it'd be most accurate to say the parents of a dual Brazilian and American or dual Serbian and American citizen.

You keep writing as if to imply that someone who might have access to Honduran citizenship, the way I would have access to Irish citizenship by dint of an Irish grandparent, is somehow less of an American citizen than others. Is that what you mean to imply?

Not quite. Citizenship is a somewhat odd thing (think China or Japan and other places and how they interpret citizenship) in that countries have different views on it and how its gained (some require military service, for example). And the children are no less a citizen, but they are also not less of a citizen of the second country either (which seems to be an implication some are trying to make)

So your parents were not more American than say they were Irish [if their parents were still legally Irish at their births]. They were the same. But we're trying to say they are more American than they are Irish and by law they would not be.

Can you bring us back to the place where I am meant to care about this? We are talking about people who have known no other country than their home country --- America.

Well, affected families have two options --split up (some in America some back home in Croatia, Honduras, etc. or follow their parents as their dual citizenship allows and apply for visa and citizenship as allowed by law.

I agree that those are the options. What I don't understand is how that isn't abhorrent: lose your parents, or lose your home country. What kind of a choice is that? No kind at all. We owe our countrymen better than that. I mean, we just plainly do; it's close to the bare minimum obligation we have as a nation.

Simple solution: amend the constitution and ban the 14th amendments birthright clause. Are there any other countries on Earth that support people sneaking in to pop out a baby with the knowledge that said country will fully pay for and grant all rights and privileges to that child? No. It's not about compassion for immigrants, it's about reality and economics. We have millions of homeless and impoverished in our own backyards so let's stop incentivizing the poor of other countries to come here and get a free ride on the back of our middle class.

Are you advocating that we amend the Constitution to strip the citizenship from a class of American citizens?

> amend the constitution and ban the 14th amendments birthright clause.

And replace it with what, exactly? That clause [0] is, after all, what created uniform national citizenship, and eliminated varying and discriminatory state citizenship policies. Even if one agrees that the "anchor baby" problem is something that warrants limiting citizenship to combat (highly contentious proposition itself), simply blowing up the entire post-Civil War model of US citizenship is a rather brute approach with wide ranging consequences outside the immediate target area.

[0] "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."

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