Frontier Justice: The Global Refugee Crisis and What to Do About It

By Andy Lamey

(Doubleday Canada, 416 pp., $39.95)

Since the end of World War II, there hasn’t been a time when refugees and asylum seekers didn’t factor into national politics. First, there were Jewish refugees escaping the Nazis. Then there were those fleeing the totalitarianism of the Iron Curtain.  The 1970’s saw Vietnamese taking to boats and Cambodians braving the killing fields. In the 1980’s and after, conflicts in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia made refugees out of millions. And now Iraqi refugees are scattered around the Middle East and boatloads of Tunisians, Libyans and sub-Saharan Africans are packing themselves onto rickety boats and risking a four-day journey to reach a very unhappy Europe.

There have certainly been other times when careful thinking about the roots of and reasons for human rights would have been appropriate. But Andy Lamey’s Frontier Justice: The Global Refugee Crisis and What to Do About It was released at a time when politicians and citizens of the West would do well to consider not only Lamey’s suggestion for resolving the global refugee crisis but his explanation for how it came about.

Lamey achieves his most moving and best-articulated writing when he’s telling stories. And initially he tells many: Hannah Arendt’s experience of broken promises during her family’s escape from Nazi Germany; Harold Koh’s fight together with his Yale Law students to win a just resolution to Haitian interdiction and detention at Guantánamo; refugee Mohammad Al Ghazzi’s harrowing journey from Iraq to Syria to Malaysia to Australia and the deeply sad events that followed. Lamey also attempts to correct a decade of popular misunderstanding surrounding the life of Ahmed Ressam, the would-be Millenium Bomber who was stopped on the US side of the Canadian border on his way to LAX with a homemade bomb in his trunk. These stories and others are what make Frontier Justice a compelling read.

The more technical and philosophical sections, which occupy the bulk of the book, would benefit from the clarity Lamey exercises in his storytelling. To his credit, Lamey is attempting to summarize and organize 500 years of political theory on sovereignty, the constitutional failures and successes of a handful of European and North American countries, Arendt’s pessimism regarding human rights, and the fluid notion of what it means to belong. In addition, Lamey defends the right of those fleeing persecution to seek safe haven and attempts to convince readers that the current state of global travel prevents refugees from exercising this right. Throughout all of this, Lamey struggles to win hope back from Arendt’s conclusion that ‘there are many rights for citizens but few for human beings’ (Lamey’s paraphrase).  Lamey’s challenge is to present these varied and nuanced areas of political, historical and philosophical thought while engaging a reader who may not have much depth of knowledge, interest or experience in any area beyond a general concern for refugees.

While his success is debatable, the importance and timeliness of his topic is not. Even before the hope of the Arab Spring turned into a floating humanitarian crisis, boats carrying asylum seekers and economic migrants were leaving Tunisia and Libya for Europe. In 2009, Italy cut a deal with Qadhafi, which allowed the Italian coast guard to return boats of African migrants to Libya without interviewing or screening them. Such interdiction practices are noted by Lamey, with special attention paid to those of the Americans intercepting Haitians and the Australians forcing the return of boats leaving from Malaysia.

Now with Qadhafi nearly deposed and with boats landing daily on the tiny island of Lampedusa, Italy is forced to look elsewhere for help in dealing with the 27,000+ migrants that have arrived since January. After the EU failed to give Italy the assistance it requested, Italy began issuing six-month residence visas. Under the Schengen agreement, these visas allow free travel within the European Union. Italy understands that with this visa, most Tunisians, who represent the majority of arrivals, will quickly leave the country to join family and friends already living in France.

France initially agreed to honor the visa but has recently begun denying entry to Tunisians even though they have the appropriate documentation. The EU is not just facing a crisis of North African arrivals, it is facing a sovereignty crisis. When countries join the EU, they forfeit some sovereignty in exchange for other benefits, such as a strong currency or free movement and trade within the EU. With the EU failing to adequately assist Italy in facing the influx of migrants, Italy passing its problems on to member countries, and France refusing to honor valid visas, the European Union will most probably move toward reinstating national borders. This means that each country will be in charge of who it allows in for and for how long rather than be subjected to the open border policies of Schengen.  This will allow France to refuse Tunisians without breaking EU agreements and force Italy to come up with another solution.

Lamey’s answer to such crises comes in Chapter Seven, “The Right to Have Rights.”  He finds his solution in the Canadian Supreme Court case Singh vs. Minister of Employment and Immigration.  The case began in response to Canada’s wholesale rejection of Sikh asylum cases based on nothing more than the religion and nationality of those filing petitions. The case did not argue that the government overturn its decisions, only that it issue them after providing petitioners with an oral hearing – something which is constitutionally guaranteed to Canadians seeking any kind of legal decision. The question was whether the ‘everybody’ referred to in the constitution covered only Canadian citizens or whether it applied to anyone on Canadian soil. The case eventually found that ‘everybody’ means everybody in Canada and that asylum seekers are guaranteed an oral hearing.

This is a big deal because constitutional rights are rarely extended by any country to asylum seekers. Lamey goes on to argue that Singh will also prevent the creation of rights-free zones like Guantánamo or deadlines for the submission of asylum claims. (Turkey gives no deadline for European asylum seekers but non-Europeans must make their claims no more than five days after arrival. After the deadline, claims are automatically rejected).  The real strength of Singh, Lamey argues, is that it allows Canada, through the use of countries deemed to be safe and respectful of human rights, to make the right to an oral hearing portable. This means that Canada doesn’t have to be the country to hear the asylum claim. Canada can send an asylum seeker to another country or have the case heard by an entity, such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, as long as there is an assurance that the claim will be heard.  Lamey seeks two additional rights in order to ensure justice for asylum seekers: the right to be represented by legal counsel and the right not to be detained while awaiting a decision.

For Italy to meet its constitutional and international obligations under Lamey’s proposal, other EU countries would have to agree to hear cases and process them accordingly. A number of those arriving at Lampedusa will fail to meet the criteria for asylum and are instead economic migrants or seeking family reunification. If those who fail in their asylum cases are not promptly deported, Lamey argues that the system will fail as countries will still feel the burden of an increase in welfare recipients. Italy will also have to work to build a network of immigration attorneys to represent asylum seekers and find alternatives to detention, none of which can be done overnight.

It is not entirely clear that Singh solves the global refugee crisis as the book’s sub-title suggests, as Lamey’s solution seems most workable in wealthy Western countries with robust judicial systems.  To be fair, Frontier Justice doesn’t try to demonstrate how countries like Chad or Central African Republic will manage to similarly process tens of thousands of refugees currently warehoused in remote and often unstable corners of their countries, but I wish it did. I guess I’ll have to wait for Part II.

That said, Lamey’s proposal certainly makes the asylum process much more humane. To that end, his most provocative suggestion is not that asylum seekers deserve an oral hearing or a lawyer or to live outside of prison-like detention centers. It is that the immigrants who evolve into extremists like the Millenium Bomber or even the 9/11 hijackers often don’t arrive as such. Those who enter through legal means are not radicalized prior to arrival, but find themselves attracted to extremism in the course of experiencing displacement and alienation.

This isn’t a perfect answer, as most displaced and alienated people don’t become terrorists. But it does dovetail nicely with new research that finds refugees resettling in the UK are best integrated when they perceive the local people to be friendly. Things are not, of course, so simple as that, but they’re not so complicated either. So, to Lamey’s three proposed rights – oral hearing, attorney, no detention – I add the benefit that countries observant of these three rights will foster a more humane environment for asylum seekers specifically and immigrants in general, which might lead to a friendlier reception from the rest of society. And that friendliness might make all the difference. Maybe it is as simple as that.

It’s graduation season. Famous people are out making commencement speeches and images of bright shiny students in their caps and gowns populate the evening news. Job prospects for new college graduates aren’t the best, but that’s not stopping people from crossing the stage to pick up their diplomas. The truth is, even in a recession, it’s hard to tell a graduation story without talking about hope. Graduations are about endings. True. But mostly they’re about beginnings. And beginnings are about hope.

I work in the business of hope, of endings and beginnings. I work with refugees. Like graduates leaving campus, refugees resettling to other countries hug their friends and say goodbye. They clean out the temporary places they’ve called home and pack up their belongings. They think about what they’ve come through and they dream about where they’re headed. They hope.

A few years ago, I was escorting refugees from Nairobi to Newark. The first leg is a night flight, so most people sleep. But the second is a day flight and that means a lot of activity. With a bunch of kids and a few infants coupled with adult refugees who were unfamiliar with airplane amenities like seat belts and sealed meals, I had my hands full. And that was before dealing with the crew. The flight attendants were surly, visibly frustrated with the lack of sophistication of several rows of refugee passengers. They weren’t so fond of me either. Why wasn’t I doing more to keep them quiet or their rows clean?

I stood near the galley for most of the flight, rocking babies to sleep while helping one kid after another use the rest room and wash their hands. The flight attendants and I spent a lot of quality time together. We talked about why these people had fled home, the decades they’d spent in camps in Tanzania and how continued trouble in Burundi prevented a return. The flight attendants relaxed.

When the captain announced that we had entered US airspace, I asked the crew to come with me. The group of Burundians took off their headphones and looked away from the in-flight movie to hear what I had to say. I told them to lift their shades and look out, that what they saw below them was America. The Burundians celebrated with cheers and hugs and laughter. They pressed their hands and faces against the small thick windows. They pointed and showed their kids their new home.

The flight attendants? They cried. So did I.

Part of what makes these moments so moving is the genuine and uninhibited expression of hope. Such earnestness is disarming and grants us momentary reprieve from our cynical selves. We are reminded of our own hopes, of the times when everything seemed possible. I’m pretty lucky to work in a field where I frequently encounter such reminders. The lingering effects of repeated exposure to public displays of hope probably make me appear a little naïve to the rest of the world, but I’m learning to be cool with that.

By now, we’ve all heard of the boats leaving Libya and Tunisia bound for Malta and Italy’s Lampedusa. It’s not a particularly new phenomenon, though the increased numbers resulting from the Arab Spring upheavals are.  This week, though, more than one actor chose to ignore a failing boat of refugees adrift in the Mediterranean, resulting in the deaths of 63 of 72 passengers.

Multiple helicopters and military vessels came into contact with the doomed boat as it signaled for help. One chopper even dropped off some water and cookies.  At one point in its two-week death drift, the boat neared a large naval ship, possibly the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle. Someone on the ship took photos of the boat but no rescue attempt was made even though the people on the boat were indicating their distress by holding up the two infants on board. The babies later died.

This isn’t the only recent report of ships passing by as boats of refugees signal for help. It’s just the most tragic and demonstrates the repeated and blatant flaunting of maritime law.

A friend of mine was climbing Mount Everest a few years ago. The same week he was set to peak, a bearded British man about his age and appearance died on the mountain. I freaked out. I thought my friend was gone. When I finally heard from him I learned that he was fine but that he didn’t actually make it to the top despite one morning of perfect weather. His failure wasn’t due to injury. He didn’t reach the top of Everest because he and his team stopped to assist an Australian man who would have died without their assistance. What struck me most in his recounting were the people who passed by. Teams he’d shared a laugh with only the night before walked by on the skinny path pretending not to see, not to understand.  Stopping to help would have gotten in the way of their dreams, so they brushed past feigning to be blind, deaf and dumb.

Now I don’t know that the captains of the ships passing floundering boats full of African migrants are out there chasing their dreams. But I do know they are ignoring international law, and I know that very little is being done to encourage or coerce a different response.

It’s pretty easy to commit to honoring human rights when things are going well. Much more difficult is respecting them when doing so is politically inconvenient, economically costly, or otherwise undesirable.  The thing is, human rights and international law weren’t established for the easy times. They were developed to guide us when chaos threatens to lead us off course. And to reassure us that if we were out there dying at sea within view of those with the power to rescue us, someone would stop what they were doing to pull us to safety.

This week, Attorney General Eric Holder continued to chip away at the Defense of Marriage Act. While not a big story when compared with the demise of Osama bin Laden, the weakening of this ugly piece of legislation means a great deal to a great many.  On Thursday, Holder vacated a Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) decision that would have led to the deportation of Paul Wilson Dorman, a man from Ireland whose partner is from New Jersey. On Friday, a Newark judge withheld a decision in a similar case involving Henry, a Venezuelan dancer, who is married to Josh, a Princeton graduate student, pending a decision in the Dorman case. Both moves are positive signs for those eager to see the end of DOMA.

President Clinton signed DOMA into law in 1996. It recognizes marriage as a union between one man and one woman for federal purposes (i.e. immigration) and allows states to ignore same-sex marriages recognized by other states. In February, President Obama instructed the Department of Justice to stop defending DOMA but he’s said very little on the matter since. Holder’s actions this week indicate that the administration is serious about making a real move to end DOMA.

Holder’s interim decision in Dorman’s case doesn’t ensure he’ll be allowed to stay in the U.S. It does, however, mean that the court is required to re-think and reissue its decision. Conceivably, Dorman would win his case if the court finds all of the following to be true:

1)     That Dorman’s civil union is recognized under New Jersey law;

2)     That a civil union would qualify Dorman as a spouse if DOMA wasn’t in the picture;

3)     That the civil union is valid and was not entered into for the purposes of immigration;

4)     That having a “qualified relative” (i.e. an American citizen spouse) would change the court’s decision.

Should the court find in favor of Dorman, there is good reason to hope that other same-sex couples will be afforded the same immigration rights as heterosexual couples. Henry and Josh’s case is clearly dependent on this decision. They outline the rights disparity on their website, “For a non-gay couple, this wouldn’t be a problem: the foreign-born spouse would immediately get a green card after marriage to an American. But because of DOMA, the federal government does not recognize gay marriage. As a result, Josh’s application for Henry’s green card was denied.”

For those in same-sex marriages or unions with immigrants, the Dorman decision means the difference between a life together and a life struggling to be together. Marriage is hard enough without involving Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers or the BIA. For the sake of Paul Wilson Dorman and his partner, Josh and Henry, and several of my own dear friends in similar situations, I hope the court quickly returns a favorable decision. It’s long past time for this aspect of our civil and immigration law to recognize these very real families.

Lampedusa. It’s a tiny Italian island that lies closer to North Africa than it does to the Italian mainland.  European vacationers know it as a holiday destination.  Thousands of African economic migrants and asylum seekers know it as their best hope to enter Europe. Since mid-February, this image has become more reflective of Lampedusa than this one.

That’s due to the massive changes rocking North Africa.  Libyans, Tunisians, and thousands of sub-Saharans who were living and working in both countries have taken the three-day 90 mile journey from Tunisia to Lampedusa. They’re hoping for safety or a job or both. The challenge for Italy is that due to an EU agreement, each country of first asylum must be the one to determine who is a valid asylum seeker – someone fleeing persecution and therefore eligible to stay – and who is simply an economic migrant. Economic migrants are easily the more numerous. They are identified and deported. End of story.

Until now.

Italy has been begging for the EU’s help with the daily arrivals of boat people.  The EU understands Italy’s plight but doesn’t feel all that bad for them since many countries have more refugees than they do. The tactic of choice has been to remind Italy of their agreement to process people as they arrive.

Italy has taken a different route. They’ve decided to give 20,000 Tunisians a 6-month residence visa, which allow the migrants to cross borders into other EU countries.

Italy knows that most of the Tunisians arriving aren’t interested in staying in Italy. They’re interested in making it to France where many have relatives and where many already speak the language.  Italy is banking on all 20,000 going elsewhere. The EU is of course not pleased with this situation. France has increased its border security to block undocumented crossings from Italy. Additionally, France has declared that they will honor the Italian visas and allow Tunisians into France, as long as they can prove that they can financially support themselves.

This is a decidedly more difficult case for most migrants to make. Those with family might be able to rely on their bank accounts as proof. The rest will probably be turned back. Where they will go from there is a mystery – cross illegally into France or live out their visas in Italy.  Either way, both the EU and Italy are going to have to actually address the issue of migrants and, more broadly, the issue of multi-culturalism.  Muslim migrants are not going away, and EU countries are already struggling to handle their differences (see here and here).

Europe must look beyond migrant law and immigrant rights and explore what it means to be Italian or French or German while being Muslim. Clearly, no country is interested in undocumented border crossers. Understood. But boats keep arriving and borders keep getting crossed.  Determined people will find their way whether Europe likes it or not. Better to have these difficult conversations now than when a misunderstood and marginalized minority starts rioting for rights. Oh wait. We’re already there.

After the DREAM Act died last spring, it seemed little hope existed for kids brought to this country illegally by their parents. Stuck somewhere in between the countries they were born in and the country they grew up in, undocumented students lacked options following high school. This legislative season is, however, offering some surprises, including a little hope.

At least 12 states are considering bills that would provide in-state tuition to resident undocumented students, make them eligible for financial aid, or both. Ten states already allow undocumented students to enroll in public institutions of higher education. Opponents argue fairness and finances.

They say, for example, that it isn’t fair that someone here illegally should get a better rate at an Oregon state school than an American from Wyoming. They are right in noting that out-of-state tuition rates are often at least three times higher than in-state rates. But the difference between the undocumented Oregonian and the kid from Wyoming is that the kid from Wyoming has options. She can attend one of her state’s many fine institutions or she can move to Oregon and establish residency. She could even attend the Oregon school for a year at out-of-state rates and then transition to in-state. With any of these options, our budding Wyoming scholar will have financial aid made available to her. However, the undocumented kid from Oregon will be hard-pressed to find a school anywhere in the country that will take him because even those states that allow in-state tuition for the undocumented have high residency requirements and often require students to graduate from a high school within that state.

Opponents of in-state tuition for undocumented students also cite all the money the state will lose by allowing those rule-breaking border-hopping kids into the system. One problem with their logic is that they assume, if allowed, these kids would pay out-of-state rates for a college education. As much as they would like to, that’s not a possibility for most. So the issue isn’t so much one of universities losing the difference between out-of-state and in-state tuition, but of losing the difference between in-state tuition and no tuition at all.

Another problem with opponents’ arguments is that they depend on their state systems operating at capacity. Many are not. Each new student admitted does not raise the cost of running the system. Professors are paid the same whether teaching 15 kids or 30. This is part of the reason state educators are lobbying for the ability to admit undocumented students. State budgets are facing cuts. If a university can bring in extra students without raising overhead, they won’t have to increase tuition, and they won’t have to cut courses or extracurriculars. One way to enroll those extra students is to allow undocumented students access to in-state tuition.

Admitting the undocumented to our public colleges and universities makes sense – both in terms of fairness and finances. Our institutions of higher education are in the business of educating not excluding. I say we let them get on with their business.

When I read about a displaced Japanese woman named Kyoko, my first urge was congratulate her on her organizational brilliance and foresight. Kyoko has tracked each of her family’s movements on a pocket calendar from the day they left their home in Iwaki on March 12^th to their first night in a Tokyo shelter on the 18^th. On their way, they spent nights in their car in a parking lot and in line at a gas station. They reunited with relatives and shared food and water with strangers. It’s been a long, hard, tragic week for Japan. Through it all, Kyoko has maintained a record of where she was and when. She says she keeps the calendar because she’s afraid she’ll forget.

While it is Kyoko’s fear of radiation poisoning that motivates her to keep moving south, her fear of forgetting may be what eventually secures her future.

Following disaster, natural or otherwise, a great deal of aid is tied to where people are at certain times. I’m not talking about the food and water and blankets that are being distributed now. I’m talking about the assistance people will receive in a few months once it’s clear they will not soon return home or clear a return won’t ever be possible.  For example, housing assistance might be open to someone who left an area on or after a certain date but not to someone who left before. Each person applying for benefits is required to prove that their need is tied to the disaster in question. Dates and locations and detailed knowledge of both will serve as verification.

I work with refugees – people who have fled home because they fear persecution. While the circumstances of their displacement differs from that of Kyoko’s, the hurried decision to leave, the initial belief that they will quickly return and the overwhelming mystery of what comes next are similar. I’ve conducted hundreds, maybe thousands, of interviews, and regardless of culture or education or plain intelligence, dates are tricky and people forget.

If someone had walked into my interview carrying a clear and written record of how they got from A to B, it would have been a great help. But I don’t recall that ever happening. So, I sorted through the details the best I could. But in the end, I don’t really know when I got it right or when my inability to put the timeline together let someone down.

I don’t know what’s in store for the half million Japanese left homeless by the tsunami or the tens of thousands fleeing the smoldering reactors, including Kyoko and her family. But when the time comes to prove that she left Fukushima prefecture after the tsunami, Kyoko will have her calendar to help her remember.

And that might make all the difference.

My heart is in my throat. We’ve all seen the same footage: black rolling water, splintered villages, floating fires, and the blank haunted stares of survivors.

This is Japan. Right now.

But last year in Haiti we saw similar buildings in similar heaps. We saw vast muddy waters move across Pakistan. We watched buildings disappear in Thailand in 2004, and we saw those same eyes in Indonesia and Iran and Burma and New Orleans. With six nuclear reactors currently in danger of meltdown along Japan’s eastern shore, I am reminded of my ten-year-old self staring at images of the slow scary plastic suits moving their ticking wands across the condemned and contaminated in the Soviet Ukraine.

I couldn’t turn away then, and I can’t turn away now.

The devastating fact is that natural disasters aren’t going away and that climate related disasters are predicted to increase in scale and rate of occurrence. That means that those who lose their homes, neighborhoods or entire towns will be on the move in greater numbers in the coming years.

Some experts predict that 50 million people will be displaced by climate change by 2020. The effects of that change can be as loud as the wind that accompanied Hurricane Katrina or as soft as the sound of the dry ground cracking in Kenya 240 days after the last rain fell.

The people forced to leave their homes under these conditions are often referred to as environmental refugees. They do not, however, have the same rights as those who flee persecution. The persecuted are protected by the 1951 Geneva Convention and served by an international regime dedicated to them.

Those displaced by natural disaster are without such support and are left on their own or with insufficient answers. See, for example, Haiti. One year after the earthquake, more than a million people are still without homes.

We can do better.

This week, we will watch the clean-up begin in Japan and hope that sea water can sufficiently cool a radioactive core. We might remember other earthquakes and other tsunamis. We might think of Chernobyl or Three Mile Island.  We might consider natural disasters that have hit this country – San Francisco earthquakes, New Jersey floods, tornadoes wiping away entire prairie towns. And that is fine. It’s good to remember.

But we must start thinking ahead.

A new global response to the environmentally displaced is urgently needed. Of course I want to see foreign aid survive the budget battle in Washington. That is a start. But a new way of thinking about how we help in the long term, that is what’s needed.

If we fail to meet this challenge, if we fail to think through and plan for this future, we will be left with a very heavy burdern: 100,000,000 questioning eyes and our hearts in our throats.

I am not an expert on the economy or on balancing anything more substantial than my checkbook, but I do know that many of the programs slashed by House Republicans this week are not the cause of our financial woes. Groups specifically targeted include homeless veterans, low income women and children, those benefitting from mosquito nets and HIV testing, and those displaced by war and persecution.

A ruby red House passed a budget that would cut US assistance to refugees by 45%, reducing support from $1.685 billion to $823 million. Should the Senate accept these reductions, the number of refugees currently depending on the US for clean water in camps or an opportunity to start new lives in this country will be greatly and tragically reduced.

It is no exaggeration to say that these cuts will cost lives. True, these lives are not American lives, but the world’s most powerful country has an obligation to provide humanitarian assistance as it is able. And we are able. As tough as times are for many Americans, we have not been reduced to living in tents, risking rape in order to collect firewood, or subsisting on a couple tablespoons of oil and a cup of cornmeal a day. Our children can still go to school. Most importantly, we are still living in the country we call home.  As tough as many of our lives have become, we are still living in abundance.

Our continued willingness to fight and finance two wars while increasing military spending confirms we are not yet living in scarcity. The Republican bill provides $526 billion in defense spending, up from $523 billion in 2010. Republicans want to cut a relatively small but vital humanitarian program nearly in half but increase already hefty military spending? The United States has the biggest military budget in the world, outspending China, the second biggest spender, six times over. It can be safely said that shifting a few dollars from defense to humanitarian assistance isn’t going to break the Pentagon. (Check out this video that explains a similar sentiment using Oreos as props. Yum.)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVPGb21oaq8&feature=related[/youtube]

In addition, maintaining humanitarian funding goes a long way to improving the image of the US around the world.  We hear a lot of talk about winning hearts and minds, but it is hard to believe the sincerity of those words when military spending increases as humanitarian assistance decreases.

I don’t know about you, but my heart isn’t won at the barrel of a gun. 

The annual attack on the 14^th Amendment and birthright citizenship is underway. Jus soli is the granting of citizenship to anyone born within a country regardless of the citizenship of the parent. Those seeking to eliminate birthright citizenship claim that a misinterpretation of the 14^th Amendment has led to a plague of anchor babies. Each baby born adds to the off-shore flotilla of undocumented parents patiently bobbing in the waves waiting for their anchors to age. At 21, these anchor babies can legally file for their non-American parent(s) to join them in the United States.

More than a few state legislators have formed the dully dubbed State Legislators for Legal Immigration to promote illegal alien invasion prevention through state legislation. SLLI (sound it out) promotes itself with a logo of crosshairs centered somewhere near the point where Kansas, Oklahoma and Colorado meet. Aside from the tackiness of the continuing use of such imagery following the Tuscon shooting and the resulting national conversation about Ms. Palin’s use of said imagery, SLLI has clearly marked a place with a convergence of illegal aliens. And where there are illegal aliens, anchor babies are sure to follow.

SLLI claims that “currently, hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens are crossing U.S. borders to give birth and exploit their child as an ‘anchor baby,’ as a means to obtain residency, access taxpayer-funded benefits and steal American jobs for themselves and for their families.”  A new Pew Research Center report disagrees. It finds that most parents of supposed anchor babies arrived more than two years prior to the birth of the baby. Unless illegal aliens have the gestation periods of elephants, most babies born to undocumented parents are nothing more or less than babies born to undocumented parents.

The Arizona Senate Judiciary Committee is considering two bills that would redefine Arizona state citizenship and seek Congressional permission to establish a system allowing states to issue one birth certificate to citizen babies and another birth certificate to those who do not have at least one parent who can prove they are a US citizen or legal permanent resident. Due to a lack of support, the progress of those bills is currently stalled. Unfortunately, thirty-nine other states have birthright related legislation pending. As does Congress thanks to Senators David Vitter and Rand Paul.

Anchor babies and their parents are not the cause of our weak economy or of foreclosures or of a decline in US stature.  Americans were able to manufacture that kind of success all on their own with greed and arrogance as the leading causes.  It is a mistake to tinker with an amendment designed to correct for this country’s failure to live up to its own declared self-evident truth – that all are created equal.  If those who seek to eliminate birthright citizenship are truly concerned about American exceptionalism, they should maintain an institution that truly is exceptional: jus soli. With the countries of the Americas as its main proponents, it truly is an American institution.