National Post View: Are Republican candidates actually on to something about “anchor babies”? | National Post

National Post Editorial on the US debate in the Republican primaries on  birth tourism (‘anchor babies’) and implications for Canada:

We aren’t endorsing any policy change here, but would simply point out that birthright citizenship is not the gold standard of fairness many might believe. As with the United States, changing the status quo would involve great expense and effort, making it of questionable pragmatic value. But in principle, the GOP candidates have a point: in a liberal democracy, the right of citizenship should be based on actual connection to the country in question, not a mere reflection of where one happened to be born.

The editorial ignores that CIC and provincial evidence shows this is a minimal issue in terms of numbers (see my earlier article of a year ago in the Hill Times What happened to Kenney’s cracking down on birth tourism? Feds couldn’t do it alone):

Officials could only identify about 500 cases of suspected birth tourism out of an annual average of some 360,000 live births in Canada, or 0.14 per cent.

CIC public consultations in  2013 resulted only in more anecdotes, not hard evidence.

Evidence-based editorials please!

National Post View: Are Republican candidates actually on to something about “anchor babies”? | National Post.