Anchor babies DO exist

Sorry, fellow liberals, but conservatives are sometimes right. Even wingnuts are occasionally right. And, per this story out of Los Angeles, anchor babies do exist.

How much of an issue is it? I don't know. It almost surely is less, maybe even far less, than wingnuts play it up to be. But, if there is/was an entire "maternity hotel" in suburban LA for Chinese women to fly here on tourist visas (and, don't forget Bobby Jindal's parents wanting to make sure he was born in the US), isn't it just possible that similar facilities, if lower key, exist for Mexican illegal immigrants along the southern border?

The story says that there's a whole "industry" for this, apparently Chinese-specific, though the story is not quite clear, in LA's San Gabriel Valley. That would seem to underscore that something similar could indeed exist for Mexican and/or other Hispanic immigrants, whether illegal or legal.

Is the answer to revoke birthright citizenship, as wingnuts want to do? Probably not. That said, what answers short of a greater police crackdown on, and dragnet for, maternity hotels, is there?

Naturalization the latest DHS screwup

Legal immigrants are finding itever-harder to get naturalized after they file citizenship applications.

Imagine getting denied citizenship, and threatened with deportation, for reasons like this:
• A criminal charge from years ago that was pled down to misdemeanor level;
• A husband and wife, both from the Philippines, whose parents got them green cards identifying them as singles, not knowing they had secretly married;
• Forgetting to update your home address;
• Not showing up for fingerprinting, even though you’re a quadriplegic and unable to leave home.

That’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of that wonderful Department of Homeland Security that both Republicans and Democrats wanted, and that was cobbled together on the fly.