And that’s true. But your statement ^ implies that it isn’t, or that it’s OK, because:
Which represents a very small number, and are we really going to deport people who have lived their lives as US citizens because of potential fraud committed by someone else when they were newborns?
There are orders of magnitude more people than this who are US citizens who lose all documentation of their birth due to fire, flood, theft, etc. Ship them off, too?
Then you’re blind. They are citizens. Period.
And here is the real problem. It cannot be proven definitively.
Should they retroactively reverse the findings of a decades-long investigation because the people of the area would later vote for HRC?
The prosecutions have not been about that issue. This is about midwives selling fraudulent certificates to families in Mexico. If the kid is born north of the border, it is a valid birth certificate. Once again, it is horrible that anyone actually born in the US should go through such an investigation.
Trump cannot possibly have been the impetus for the prosecutions and denial of SS and passports in the mid 90s. Actually, according to NBC, such practices have been investigated and prosecuted since the 1960s.
The Houston Press, in 2008 reported that 74 midwives had been convicted of such fraud. In some of these cases, the passport application was flagged because the midwife had registered the birth with Mexico at the time of delivery, and sold the false documents to the parents later. One case was mentioned where the US birth certificate was provided by the midwife three years after the birth.
I don’t think I had heard of this issue until Xeni’s post. It is a tough situation.
I was just using the standard abbreviation but, yes, trans people are definitely easy and visible targets for conservative bigots in government as well as the Know-Nothing 27% in general. Historically, right-wing populists are going to react badly to any phenomenon that breaks so glaringly with patriarchal gender norms and the current crop is no different.
Oh, come now, you’re just being uncivil/being a left-wing extremist/not respecting the office/not accepting that they have no choice but to enforce the law to the letter. /s
No, they should consider them citizens regardless of how they vote because, despite the fraud perpetrated upon them when they were infants, they’ve spent the intervening four decades having their taxes accepted by the U.S., having their service in the military accepted by the U.S., having their participation in their communities accepted by the U.S., all the while assuming they were citizens by birth. Apparently none of that is good enough to create mitigating circumstances.
If one is willing to acknowledge these things instead of avoid discussing them then it’s not a “tough situation”, it’s a matter of basic decency and fairness; one that a “president” who’s fond of dismissing the letter of the law when it comes to himself could rectify with a signature. Instead, though, he’s taking the opposite course because, among other things, the district does vote Dem.
Well, yes. But it is also not appropriate to blame him personally for everything.
Maybe the people who sold the fraudulent documents, or the people who bought them knowing it was dishonest and illegal, should get at least a tiny bit of the blame.
Those aren’t the people who are being punished, though. Your blind spot is showing.
ETA:
It really isn’t. Just like with DREAMers, we’re talking about punishing adults who were children when any violations may have occurred, and who have been accepted as US citizens. If it’s OK to punish them for something illegal their parents may have done, then by all means, our own president needs to serve some jail time for the war profiteering and civil rights violations of Fred Trump.
No-one here is arguing otherwise. This article is about people who, like the hundreds of children who are still incarcerated and separated from their parents and like the DREAMers, are being punished for something that is not their fault because it serves the regime’s xenophobic political purposes.
He’s being blamed for punishing people who’ve done nothing wrong not only as his personal preference but as a matter of his regime’s policy. I don’t expect him to do the right thing because he doesn’t have an iota of the character and integrity of his predecessors in the office.
I’m talking about why he’s opened up something that’s been closed for close to a decade. They dealt with this under Obama. He’s opening it up, because he wants to deport as many brown people as possible so the GOP can keep control of Texas. Period. He’s a racist asshole. Accept it.
Yup. I get the frustration and disappointment and horror that ordinary decent Americans feel when faced with this shit, but the sad fact is that this kind of stuff has been part and parcel of what America is about.
Now, if you say “This is not what America should be about!”, then I can wholeheartedly agree, 100%.
I know. I was commenting on the story @gracchus linked to, which was about denaturalisation. Sorry if I was derailing.
Does anyone know if the US is a signatory to whichever convention forbids rendering people stateless (I think there is one, it may be the UDHR)? Because if it’s declaring that these people aren’t Americans, and Mexico refuses to recognise them as Mexican, that’s exactly what it’s doing.
I crossed the southern border between Tijuana and San Ysidro a couple of times this week, where they’re building a new border crossing facility. I feel it’s particularly ominous that going in the direction of Mexico, the buildings have a commercial building/learning facility vibe, with tiled floors and painted drywall. Going the other direction, the new US facility has all the warmth of a detention center, with large concrete columns and chain-link fencing.
Has the frequency of cases increased? Probably, although the WaPo article does not have numbers to validate that. But the characterization that this, and every other bad thing that has ever happened should be blamed squarely on Trump does not seem accurate.
Sort of like the “immigrant children in cages” situation. When the images were believed to be from the current administration, they were proof of his monstrosity. When it became clear that they were from 2014, they became simply images of a complicated situation taken out of context.
Both of these issues are ongoing problems with US policy and enforcement.
Dude, just like the Muslim ban, he said he was going to do it. Now you’re saying, “Oh, this is leftovers from Obama?” Citing one case, where now there are almost 100 (that we know about)? Maybe you’re with Paul Ryan, and of the opinion that he’s just driving trollies us, and he’d never revoke Brennan’s security clearance; separate toddlers from their parents and put them in concentration camps; fire the Deputy Attorney General and the Special Prosecutor. Oh, that last one he hasn’t done yet. Wait, I better check before I hit “reply.” Nope, not yet.
You are correct, that the Trump administration ban on travelers from all Muslim-majority countries was pretty brazen and offensive.
I could not guess. My issue is not whether the policies are wise and fair, but whether it is appropriate to make every single thing about Trump. And the exaggerations. “Toddlers in concentration camps”?? Like Treblinka. Dachau, Bergen-Belsen? Is that what you believe is happening to the kids in places like Casa Padre?
I think that sort of rhetoric is what makes reasoned debate difficult. You and I are having difficulty finding common ground, and neither of us are even Trump supporters. (unless you are driving trollies me, but I do not get that vibe)
According to the Houston Chronicle, 75 midwives have been convicted so far for these sorts of frauds. I imagine it is more than 100 cases.
