The United States and Canada are the only two industrialized countries that confer automatic citizenship on babies born within the countries’ borders, even if their parents are not citizens. In the United States, this is a constitutional right. The Fourteenth Amendment states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States …”

Yet some Republicans, such as Donald Trump, want to deny citizenship to children born here to undocumented workers by changing or reinterpreting the Fourteenth Amendment.  This is a stunt. Without solutions to our immigration mess, this measure, taken alone, would only exacerbate the problem we have of millions here illegally.

It’s no coincidence that the debate over birthright citizenship has sprung up in the wake of the breakdown in the rule of law under President Obama. Rather than being returned to their home countries, undocumented workers are welcomed at the border and settled in various communities around the country.  Criminals who are deported return and continue to commit crimes, as in the recent case of Guaymar Cabrera-Hernandez  who was deported, returned, released from the Montgomery County Detention Center, and carjacked two cars in the Washington, D.C. area last week.

Read the full article at Economics 21: Focus on Anchor Babies Misses Broader Immigration Problems