| | (The clip is sort of "Born in East LA" condensed into pill form.)
I went around on this with one of my conservative friends. She sent me a sharable tirade, one of those forwarded emails, and I replied that two of my grandparents were called "Wops" because they came over "Without Passport" in 1920 -- but passports were only invented for World War I when the warring monarchies feared spies. Before that, people went wherever they wanted, though the German states and cities, for instance, did have local laws requiring visitors to register with the police, which, in the 19th century was often a courtesy handled by the hotel. Her reply was to admit that her grandmother -- Jewish -- was also smuggled into this country in the 1930s.
We then agreed that the real problem appears to be that everyone here is entitled to welfare. Moreover, giving illegals driver's licenses then validates them. The problem with that is that everyone is required to have identification. I have a story later about being harrassed by a dean of the business college for selling numismatic items in the business college. When the campus police arrived, they demanded my driver's license. I told her that I was not driving and provided my campus ID. She asked for "state ID" and I pointed out that the Board of Trustees is appointed by the Governor with the Advice and Consent of the Senate. She was not happy. (Not knowing me, she also did not take well to my responding to her as if I were an officer and she were my sergeant. She expected me to act like a civilian because I was wearing a suit. I called her "ma'am" often, but as reporting, rather than excusing or justifying. Anyway, more on that later...)
My conservative friend and I exchanged opinions on a George Will column which I also sent to a criminal justice instructor we both had for Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, and Ethics, at the community college. In that column (here from TownHall.com) Will reads a narrow constitutional interpretation into "birthright citizenship." In sending that to our prof, I pointed out that if the children of ambassadors are born here, their parents certainly do not want them subject to American law.
To my knowledge there is no clear "Objectivist" analysis of citizenship and rights, though both have been argued here long and often. Should non-citizens be allowed trial by jury? Why? Should they be allowed to serve on juries? Why not? Before you answer, consider that in a nation of immigrants, non-citizens have served in the armed forces and given their lives to defend the nation they adopted.
In fact, the process of "naturalization" changed several times over the 200 years, there being no single objective explanation for such a thing.
Truth to tell, America is very generous, of course, because in other nations, immigrants are never citizens, no matter how many generations ago their ancestors arrived. For centuries, Europe has been plagued by Gypsies, Jews, and other footloose peoples (Muslims, Turks and Arabs now) who never belong to the places they visit but just take out resources, often by direct theft, though more often today by legal theft via welfare. At least, that's the European nativist view, a set of assumptions shared by American nativists, even here on RoR.
(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 5/08, 3:46am)
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