Is ‘birth tourism’ a problem in Canada? Doctors on frontline of debate

2016/08/12 Leave a comment

All the available evidence shows that the numbers are extremely small, both in absolute terms and in relation to the overall number of births in Canada.

IRCC, if it is not already doing so, should be systematically collect better quality data, working with provincial health ministries, rather than the piece meal data that we have now.

Despite the small numbers, there is a need to regulate or prohibit birth tourism consultancy services to avoid a further increase in the numbers. The CMA might also wish to take a more pro-active role.

Changing birthright citizenship, as the previous government learned, is not feasible without provincial buy-in given the various linkages between provincial vital statistics agencies and healthcare systems and any measure to restrict birthright citizenship:

Birth tourism appears to be on the rise in some parts of Canada, raising questions for doctors and hospitals, as well as debate about Canada’s practice of offering instant citizenship to infants born in the country.

“We sense there’s a growing demand in birth tourism from several countries, especially considering the instability in today’s world,” Alex Davidson, managing partner of the Toronto-based LP Group, told CTV News. “There are more and more people coming in and approaching us.”

Davidson said he typically sees two types of clients. Some are wealthy individuals, often from European countries, who want a “second passport” for their children and are able to pay anywhere between $10,000 and $20,000 to deliver a baby in Canada.

Davidson said some of his recent clients have included U.K. residents worried about the post-Brexit future once their country leaves the European Union.

Others are people from poor, crime-ridden countries who want to provide security for their children, and hope that their Canadian babies can provide an anchor in the country for the rest of the family.

“Canada has been perceived — well, it is — as a safe harbour on this planet,” Davidson said.

He said LP Group helps birth tourism clients find temporary accommodations in the country and the firm also has a list of Canadian doctors who are willing to see foreign patients.

“Elena” is a pregnant woman from Russia now awaiting to give birth in Toronto. She spoke to CTV News on condition of anonymity.

“My baby will get Canadian citizenship upon delivery and also with a Canadian passport he will get some benefits like free school and free healthcare,” she said. “It is good for the baby I think because the baby gets to choose if he wants to live in Russia, as in my case, or in Canada.”

At a recent Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada conference, Dr. Fiona Mattatall an obstetrician in Calgary, presented figures that show an increase in the number of overseas patients who have given birth in Calgary hospitals.

She said there are now about 10 “passport babies” born each month in the city’s hospitals. Her survey also found many doctors are uncomfortable with the practice.

While many overseas patients pay to have their babies delivered in Canada, some do not, leaving hospitals on the hook for the costs.

Dr. Saul Pytka, a Calgary anesthesiologist, said he’s alarmed by the issue.

“I am frustrated — and I have to be honest, angered — by the fact that as a society we are being abused. I think we are a very generous society,” he said.

Under the Citizenship Act, all babies born on Canadian soil are automatically granted citizenship, except for children of foreign diplomats.

Canada and the United States are the only G7 countries that have birthright citizenship. Other countries like France, Germany and Australia have revoked automatic citizenship unless at least one of the parents is a national citizen.

Birth tourism is not illegal in Canada. There is no official federal data on “birth tourism,” and some say the numbers are still small. According to Statistics Canada figures from 2012, the most recent year for which numbers are available, there were only 699 babies born in Canada to foreign mothers out of more than 382,000 births across the country.

But one immigration consultant says there has “certainly” been an increase in birth tourism in Canada over the past few years with sites advertising companies that assist in getting pregnant women to Canada.

“The best gift you can give your child is a Canadian passport” says one website.

A potentially costly overhaul

In 2014, immigration officials urged the Conservative government to restrict granting citizenship by birth on Canadian soil to children with at least one parent who is a citizen or permanent resident.

But the report cited limited data and possible increased costs to provinces and territories as potential barriers to legislation reform.

Will Tao, a Vancouver-based immigration lawyer, told CTV News Channel last week that overhauling birthright citizenship rules could be extremely costly for Ottawa.

“Let’s actually look at what are the motivating factors, what are the organizations that are working abroad, perhaps without reference to Canadian law, and promoting individuals to come here,” Tao said.

Online searches turn up dozens of organizations and groups in various countries that offer advice and help facilitate travel for women who want to give birth in Canada.

“Perhaps it is not illegal right now, but perhaps it needs to be curbed or organizations that are running the services need to be stopped,” Tao said.

He also said that panic over birth tourism, especially in British Columbia, is being fuelled by a “general misunderstanding of who a foreign national is.”

Many foreign nationals have study or work permits, “and in my mind these individuals are all on the pathway to permanent residency,” Tao said.

A petition that seeks to eliminate automatic citizenship for babies born to foreign nationals in Canada is adding fire to the debate.

Kerry Starchuk, a Richmond, B.C., woman, is calling on the federal government to enact legislation that will require at least one parent to be a Canadian citizen or permanent resident in order for a baby born on Canadian soil to be granted automatic citizenship.

The petition, sponsored by Conservative MP Alice Wong, has garnered more than 6,700 signatures since June 16 and will eventually be introduced in the House of Commons.

Starchuk said she started the petition because she suspects a house next door to hers serves as a motel for pregnant foreigners who come to Canada to secure birthright citizenships for their babies.

Source: Is ‘birth tourism’ a problem in Canada? Doctors on frontline of debate | CTV News

In a related story, the Canadian Medical Protective Association highlights potential medical and liability issues:

The Canadian Medical Protective Association is cautioning doctors about providing medical services to birth tourists coming here to have babies in order to acquire Canadian citizenship for their newborns.

“Canadian physicians who provide care to non-residents are at increased risk of medical-legal difficulties arising outside of Canada,” says a notice from the CMPA. “The Association is not structured to assist when medical-legal actions are instigated by non-residents outside of Canada.”

The CMPA is the legal defence organization for doctors; it provides and pays lawyers and settlements when doctors are sued for malpractice by Canadian patients. The new bulletin to physicians regarding medical tourism is relevant and timely, given a local trend where an ever-increasing number of non-residents (from 18 in 2010 to 339 last year) are having their babies, mostly at Richmond Hospital. The Vancouver Sun and The Province have reported that the provincial government is now aware of more than two dozen “birth houses” where pregnant women stay prior to, and after, the births of their babies, before returning to China.

Birth tourism brokers marketing their services show photos of Lower Mainland hospitals and lists of Mandarin speaking doctors to deliver babies.

The CMPA statement — titled “Emerging trends and medical-legal risks in medical tourism” — warns that while there are still more Canadians travelling abroad for medical treatment than foreign visitors coming here, there are risks to think about for both patient groups. Doctors should ensure foreign patients sign agreements promising not to sue outside of Canada and they should also make sure they fully document discussions with non-residents and the care provided to them.

 The CMPA said it cannot share information about the number of doctors sued by birth tourists. But it is attuned to the broader trend of medical tourism.

“We have published guidance for physicians on the medical-legal risks associated with medical tourism and the steps they can take to mitigate risks associated with this practice,” said Dr. Doug Bell, a managing director at CMPA.

Source: Canadian birth tourism doctors cautioned on risk of liability | Vancouver Sun

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Why Birthright Citizenship Is Good For America

2016/08/03 Leave a comment

Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute makes the case for birthright citizenship (I would argue that integration is a more accurate term than assimilation):

The U.S. rule of birthright citizenship offers a stark contrast to policies pursued in Germany and Japan, where the children of immigrants are either denied citizenship or face a much harder path toward obtaining it.

The German guest-worker program of the 1950s through the 1970s admitted large numbers of Turks, Tunisians, Portuguese, and others to work in their growing economy. Originally, the Germans had no intention of letting the workers and their families stay permanently, but many, especially the Turks, did stay. Their German-born children were not allowed to become citizens. The same was true in Japan, where the Korean minority, called zainichi, was barred from citizenship for generations despite being born in Japan.

In both countries, the results were tragic. The lack of birthright citizenship created a legal underclass of resentful and displaced young people who were officially discriminated against in the government-run education system and had tenuous allegiance to the country in which they were born. After four generations in Japan, ethnic Koreans still self-identify as foreign. In both countries, these noncitizen youths are more prone to crime and extreme political ideologies like Islamism or communism.

Their failure to naturalize the Turks contrasts with Germany’s Aussiedler system that “repatriated” ethnic Germans and their families living in the territory of the Soviet Union, immediately granting them citizenship by virtue of their blood connection to Germany. Aussliedler inflows peaked in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when approximately 2.2 million ancestral Germans were admitted and given citizenship. Germany partly rectified its system in 1999, extending citizenship to Turks and creating some legal categories that can gain citizenship through birthright.

Equality Breeds Contentment

Youths born to noncitizen immigrants in countries without birthright citizenship have little legal stake in the nations they were born in but also have no place to go. Many might gain citizenship through the ethnicity of their parents in Korea or Turkey, but with no connections to those nations, citizenship there is meaningless.

In the United States, by contrast, children of immigrants are legally on the same playing field as children born to American citizens. Both can serve in the military, purchase firearms, serve on juries, and be treated the same by the legal system. That is one reason why 89 percent of second-generation Hispanics and 96 percent of third-generation Hispanics have described themselves as American only. “Hispanic-American” or “Mexican-American” is still popular among some after several generations, just as “Italian-American” still survives, but these Americans do not view themselves as foreigners.

The likelihood of amending the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause is small, but that amendment should be defended because of how well it has aided immigrant assimilation in the United States. Remembering the Fourteenth Amendment as a correction to previous racist policies and court decisions is essential, but that history should not blind us to its pro-assimilation impact on the descendants of America’s immigrants.

Source: Why Birthright Citizenship Is Good For America

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The US Supreme Court needs to settle birthright citizenship.

2016/06/08 Leave a comment

One to watch given the current political climate:

Soon, the Supreme Court will decide whether to take a case of astounding constitutional importance. Its outcome could alter the rules governing citizenship, equal protection, and the power of the federal government. And it centers around a tiny chain of islands that you probably cannot find on a map.

The question: Can Congress decide that an entire group of Americans—born in America, raised in America, allegiant to America—does not deserve United States citizenship?

American Samoans, the group in question, have been Americans since 1900, when the United States acquired their territory in the midst of an imperialist expansion. Since then, residents of America’s other territories have either achieved independence or gained U.S. citizenship. But in 2016, American Samoans stand alone: Unlike people born in, say, Puerto Rico or Guam, they are not granted citizenship at birth. Instead, they are considered “noncitizen nationals,” a legally dubious term that effectively renders them stateless, a mark of second-class status imprinted on their (American) passports.

Is all of this constitutional? No, it is not. And that’s why a group of American Samoans are asking the Supreme Court to invalidate the status quo and extend citizenship to all those born in the territory. Their lawsuit arrives at a peculiar cultural moment, in the midst of an election that has thrown the definition of birthright citizenship into political (if not legal) controversy, with Republicans such as Donald Trump challenging its constitutional legitimacy. If the justices take the case, they’ll have the opportunity to definitely settle the matter of U.S. citizenship. If they do not, they’ll allow this unfortunate debate to rage on—and permit American Samoans to suffer citizenship discrimination indefinitely.

The story of birthright citizenship in the United States is, in large part, the story of the Civil War. In Dred Scott v. Sandford, the Supreme Court decision that arguably rendered a war inevitable, the justices found that black people, even those born in the U.S., were not citizens. Rather, the court held, black people were “a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race … and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them.”

After the Civil War, Congress and the states overruled Dred Scott by passing the 14th Amendment, whose very first sentence explicitly granted birthright citizenship to “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” This clause was originally designed to give birthright citizenship to formerly enslaved people and their children. But, as the Supreme Court confirmed in a later ruling, it also promised citizenship to anyone born in America. (The only exceptions were the children of diplomats and certain Indian tribes that were then quasi-sovereign.)

Source: The Supreme Court needs to settle birthright citizenship.

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The [Texas] Border War on Birthright Citizenship | Rolling Stone

2015/10/31 Leave a comment

One of the nastier and meaner policies:

In 2013, an estimated 295,000 children were born in the U.S. who had at least one undocumented immigrant parent, according to the Pew Research Center, accounting for eight-percent of all domestic births. And Texas is home to 1.65 million undocumented immigrants, nearly 15 percent of the national total. It is reasonable to assume that tens of thousands of children are born to undocumented immigrants in Texas every year, and that a great many of them now lack birth certificates. “These quasi-citizens, outcasts, will likely experience the harsh effects of being unable to prove their true status for many years to come,” reads the Mexican government’s amicus brief. “We are witnessing the creation of a vulnerable citizenry: undocumented citizens.”

Texas is an outlier in this regard, even among states that refuse to accept matrículas. In Arizona, parents can get a birth certificate for their children with a credible witness to attest to their identity and a notorized signature. In Arkansas, they can present a foreign passport without a U.S. visa. In Virginia, they can use a hospital birth letter. Even Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that advocates for harsher immigration restrictions, told the Austin-American Statesman that “the more I think of it, the more I come down against the Texas argument, reluctantly.”

No one supporting the plaintiffs has been able to point to a smoking gun that reveals the state had a pre-meditated anti-immigrant agenda. In 2010, when Arizona enacted its sweeping SB 1070 law targeting undocumented immigrants, the legislature declared “the intent of this act is to make attrition through enforcement the public policy of all state and local government agencies in Arizona.” In other words, by cracking down on undocumented immigrants, the state hoped many would leave and fewer would come. But there has been no such declaration in Texas — the state describes its policy as “facially neutral and non-discriminatory.” Despite the fact that Texas politicians take apparent glee in talking tough on immigration and giving Washington the finger, no email has surfaced between state officials that reads, “Let’s squeeze ’em all out.” Even Harbury admits that — unlike in Arizona — the Texas policy grew in fits and starts. “It’s not like someone flipped a switch,” she says.

Still, the timing seems awfully suspicious. The decision to deny foreign passports that lacked a U.S. visa came on the heels of President Obama’s Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals, a 2012 policy that lifted the threat of deportation for as many as 1.7 million undocumented immigrants. The increasing rejection of the matrícula as a valid ID coincided with the Central American immigration “surge” in 2013 and 2014. And what appeared to be a widening crackdown on the matrícula this year followed a Texas-led lawsuit filed last December to block President Obama’s new executive actions on immigration, one of which — the Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA) — offers immigration deferrals and work authorizations to the undocumented parents of U.S. citizens.

Source: The Border War on Birthright Citizenship | Rolling Stone

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Donald Trump’s campaign manager: 400,000 ‘anchor babies’ born in U.S. every year | PolitiFact

2015/09/21 Leave a comment

The numbers in America of those born to undocumented immigrants and the much smaller amount due to ‘birth tourism’ (340,000 compared to 8,600, or 8 and 0.2 percent of total births respectively – Canadian figures from CIC analysis show 500 out of 360,000 total live births or 0.14 percent) :

Those figures may have been accurate several years ago, but they are outdated when compared to current estimates, said Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer with the Pew Research Center. Passel is the author of a widely cited 2010 Pew Hispanic Center report that pins the number of children born to undocumented immigrants at 340,000 in 2008 (about 8 percent of all births that year).

“Figures as high as 400,000 per year are plausible for the mid 2000s, but our current estimates are around 300,000 per year,” he told us. “The numbers were higher in the mid 2000s than now — in part because there were more unauthorized immigrants then and overall birth rates, for natives and immigrants alike, were higher before the recession.”

So Lewandowski’s number is slightly exaggerated.

His characterization of these births as “anchor babies” is also problematic, however, as the metaphor implies intent that the numbers don’t back up. Based on past reporting, it’s not clear whether every birth to an undocumented mother was for the purpose of tethering the family to American soil.

“There are a million hardworking Hispanic people in San Diego who came here to work and then happened to have a baby,” midwife Lauren Weber said in the 2010 fact-check. “Then, there are people who come over in order to have a baby.”

Weber also described a practice known as “birth tourism,” in which middle- and upper-class visitors on tourist visas travel to the United States specifically to have a baby. The numbers for these types of births are much lower, at around 8,600, or 0.2 percent of all births, in 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As for undocummented immigrants, experts don’t think they have the same motivations.

“I believe that most migrants come for economic reasons and opportunity,” said Theresa Brown, the director of immigration policy at the Bipartisan Policy Institute. “The idea that their child may be able to sponsor them for a green card in 21 years is probably too long term to be a primary driver of immigration.”

Source: Donald Trump’s campaign manager: 400,000 ‘anchor babies’ born in U.S. every year | PolitiFact

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Birthright citizenship: Fewer babies being born to women in U.S. illegally – LA Times

2015/09/15 Leave a comment

Some useful birth statistics to provide context for the USA debate:

For all of this summer’s heated campaign-trail rhetoric about immigration and women in the country illegally giving birth in the U.S., new data show that the number of such babies born here is on the decline.

The number of babies born to immigrants in the U.S. illegally is on the decline, according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. Such births still made up 8% of total U.S. births in 2013, the center found.

The issue has been in the spotlight in recent months, with Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump and other GOP candidates decrying such children as “anchor babies,” a term considered derogatory, and calling for an end to automatic citizenship for children born to immigrants in the country illegally. They say that the practice encourages illegal immigration.

According to the Pew report released late Thursday, about 295,000 such babies were born in 2013. That was a decline from a peak of 370,000 in 2007. The downward trend echos the overall drop in illegal immigration in recent years, which has been driven largely by a decrease in the number of immigrants crossing illegally from Mexico.

The population of immigrants illegally in the country dropped about 1 million during the Great Recession of 2007-2009 and has remained stable since.

“When the population went down, the births went down,” said D’Vera Cohn, a co-author of the Pew report.

The report found that about 8% of babies born in the U.S. in 2013 were to immigrants in the country illegally, a group that makes up only about 4% of the total U.S. population.

The loaded term ‘anchor baby’ conceals complex issues The high birthrate to immigrants can be explained by the differing demographics of the American-born and the foreign-born populations, according to Cohn. The immigrant group has a higher share of women of childbearing age, she said.

“In general, immigrants tend to be younger,” said Cohn. “They are the people who are willing to get up and leave and take the risk of going to another country, legally or not.”

This number is significantly larger than ‘birth tourism’ numbers (women who come to the USA to give birth and then leave, where hard data is scarce).

Source: Birthright citizenship: Fewer babies being born to women in U.S. illegally – LA Times

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Donald Trump, Elizabeth I, and the English Origins of Birthright Citizenship

2015/09/08 Leave a comment

A good in-depth piece on the history of birthright citizenship, and how it was derived from British judicial decisions:

The Republican frontrunner’s assertion that the United States is “just about” the only country “stupid enough” to grant citizenship to all children born within its borders is easily proven false. Far from a scarlet letter of perversion, the U.S. policy is more like a badge of membership in the Western Hemisphere, where nearly all countries adhere to a version of the principle, a commonality some scholars argue is a legacy of colonial pro-immigration policies in the New World.

But the term “birthright citizenship” is also misleading. There are actually two common types of birthright citizenship in the modern world, and both are incorporated into U.S. policy. Trump and those who agree with him apparently only object to one of them.

You can be born into U.S. citizenship by being born in the United States—the principle known as jus soli, or “right of the soil.” Most countries in the Americas feature jus soli citizenship. And you can also be born into U.S. citizenship by being born to U.S. citizens, even if you’re born abroad—a concept known as jus sanguinis, or “right of blood.” “Roman law,” said University of Michigan law and classics professor Bruce Frier, “was very distinctly in the jus sanguinis category.” The policy has also frequently been incorporated into modern European states, emphasizing membership in the nation through parentage.

Yet the real irony of calling “birthright citizenship” a peculiarly American stupidity is that historically and theoretically speaking, geographical birthright citizenship is precisely as American as apple pie. That is to say: it’s English—and thoroughly monarchical in origin.

Given his “anchor baby” rhetoric, Trump may be pleased to learn one thing: The case many scholars cite as establishing the theoretical basis for geographical birthright citizenship did indeed involve a troublemaking toddler. The toddler was a Scottish aristocrat, and the case was a property battle.

In 1603, Elizabeth I, the “Virgin Queen,” died without an heir. The solution was to give her cousin Mary’s son, James VI of Scotland, a second crown, making him James I of England. The tough part about that, according to the University of Miami law professor Kunal Parker, author of a forthcoming history of immigration and citizenship law, was that “under English law, aliens—those who were born outside the allegiance to the king—were not able to hold or convey titles of real property.” Thus, in 1608, an English court found itself answering an intriguing question: If two-year-old Scottish infant Robert Colville had been given lands in England, were his claims on those lands valid? The traditional English position at the time of the case, Parker said, “was of course because he’s Scottish and hence an alien he should not have good titles to lands in England.” “Every one born within the dominions of the King of England is entitled to enjoy all the rights and liberties of an Englishman.”

In his influential report on what has, inexplicably given the actual names of those involved, become known as Calvin’s Case, the English judge Sir Edward Coke articulated a distinctly feudal-sounding jus soli principle that formed the basis of much law to come: “Every one born within the dominions of the King of England, whether here or in his colonies or dependencies, being under the protection of—therefore, according to our common law, owes allegiance to—the King and is subject to all the duties and entitled to enjoy all the rights and liberties of an Englishman.” Furthermore, “Seeing then that faith, obedience, and ligeance are due by the law of nature, it followeth that the same cannot be changed or taken away.”

In other words: People born in the king’s lands are his subjects and owe him allegiance, while he owes them protection, and there’s nothing the subject can do about it. This idea failed to delight the Lockean consent-of-the-governed junkies of later decades and centuries. As the law professor Peter Schuck and the political-science professor Rogers Smith put it in their famous 1985 critique of U.S. immigration policy, Citizenship Without Consent, “At a conceptual level, [birthright citizenship] was fundamentally opposed to the consensual assumptions that guided the political handiwork of 1776 and 1787.”

Source: Donald Trump, Elizabeth I, and the English Origins of Birthright Citizenship – The Atlantic

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The US Anti-Birthright Citizenship Brigade | Mother Jones

2015/08/31 Leave a comment

Background on some of the lawyers arguing that the 14th Amendment does not provide for birthright citizenship:

Eastman and Graglia, however, may not be the best proponents of their theory. Both have a history of controversial comments and opinions that make them easy prey for Democrats. Eastman, a professor at Chapman University School of Law in California, is the chairman of the National Organization for Marriage, a group that fought bitterly against same-sex marriage, and he once equated homosexuality with “barbarism.” Graglia, of the University of Texas at Austin’s law school, is a longtime opponent of affirmative action and busing programs. His comment in 1997 that black and Hispanic students “are not academically competitive with whites” earned him the moniker “the most controversial law professor in America.”

At April’s hearing, instead of inquiring about Graglia’s views on the Citizenship Clause, Democrats on the committee instead grilled him on these past statements and entered old articles about them into the record. For a Republican Party that hopes to appeal to Hispanic voters in particular, Graglia may not be the best ambassador on the citizenship debate, which many already find offensive. In recent years, the first people to introduce the idea that birthright citizenship is more limited than is commonly understood were two professors, Peter Schuck of Yale Law School and Rogers Smith of the University of Pennsylvania, who argued in a 1985 book that Congress could exclude the children of undocumented immigrants from automatic citizenship.

While they hold to that belief today, they don’t seem particularly pleased with the Pandora’s Box they opened. “This is just NOT an issue that should be occupying the country’s attention at this moment, if ever,” Smith said in an email. “We have far, far more important problems to deal with that we are not addressing, including mounting economic inequalities, persisting racial inequalities, environmental degradation, crumbling infrastructure, a crippled labor movement. That’s why I rarely talk about the issue these days. I believe very strongly that our focus should be elsewhere.”

Source: The Anti-Birthright Citizenship Brigade | Mother Jones

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Why Dropping ‘Anchor Baby’ Is a Problem for US Politicians | TIME

2015/08/28 Leave a comment

Good article on the history of the term “anchor babies” in the US, and how it has evolved into an offensive term (in Canada, the term generally used is birth tourism, where the numbers are tiny):

This about-face stirred debates about who should decide what’s offensive and who shouldn’t. Was an American institution kowtowing to liberals? Or was a dictionary being descriptive about how a word is truly perceived among English-speakers? When Oxford Dictionaries quietly added their definition after that controversy settled, they tagged it with a bright orange offensive label. Those signs are, Oxford editor Katherine Martin says, not chosen by lexicographers making emotional decrees but affixed as guidance for people who want to use the language intelligently.

Often when language gets accused of being offensive, public figures and media shift to more neutral ground, which can lead to some exhausting phrasing. (When the AP banned their journalists from using undocumented immigrant and illegal immigrant, for instance, standards editor Tom Kent suggested to TIME that a more precise description might be “foreigners in the United States in violation of the law.”)

Martin says one problem with anchor baby is that there is no natural alternative, overwrought or otherwise—and not for the neutral reason suggested by Bush, whether or not he meant to insult anyone. “There is no neutral term for this because it is a term that is intended to be derogatory,” she says.

One indication of that intention, as the Washington Post‘s Amber Phillips points out, is that the idea it describes doesn’t entirely make sense in practice. As TIME explained in 2011, “the law says the parents of such a child must wait till she is 21 for her to be allowed to sponsor them to live and work legally in the U.S., and research shows that the vast majority of children of illegal immigrants are born years after the mother and father have arrived in the U.S.”

Regardless, the phrase has stuck. And, while debate over its use can actually lead to discussion of important issues like candidates’ positions on birthright citizenship (Bush is for it; Donald Trump, who also uses the term, is against it), that stickiness is just one more reason for conscientious politicians to steer clear of it, says linguist Zimmer. “The difficulty is that those pithy words and phrases are much more memorable and work their way into the public consciousness,” he says. “And once they’re there, they are difficult to dislodge.”

Source: Why Dropping ‘Anchor Baby’ Is a Problem for Politicians | TIME

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

2015/08/27 Leave a comment

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.

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