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Sorry, Republicans: I'm an anchor baby, and I'm not going anywhere Sorry, Republicans: I'm an anchor baby, and I'm not going anywhere
(35 minutes later)
I’m so happy that all the passengers in the Republican Party’s presidential-candidate clown car have united against so-called anchor babies. You know: the children born in this country to immigrants, legal or not – children that the United States Constitution calls “citizens” but that the Republican’s aspiring commanders-in-chief have collectively decided are an existential threat to America.I’m so happy that all the passengers in the Republican Party’s presidential-candidate clown car have united against so-called anchor babies. You know: the children born in this country to immigrants, legal or not – children that the United States Constitution calls “citizens” but that the Republican’s aspiring commanders-in-chief have collectively decided are an existential threat to America.
Related: 'Anchor babies': how the controversial term became an election talking point
They’re right. We – yep, I’m an anchor baby; more on that in a bit – are helping to expose the GOP’s anxieties by simply existing. Opponents of birthright citizenship are demonizing us as living, breathing reminders of this nation’s failed immigration policies, and find it so easy to do because we’re not gabachos. Nearly all of us are from America’s eternal and modern-day enemies: Red China, the Middle East and Latin America, especially Mexico. And such facts expose what’s really freaking out the right: the destiny of demographics.They’re right. We – yep, I’m an anchor baby; more on that in a bit – are helping to expose the GOP’s anxieties by simply existing. Opponents of birthright citizenship are demonizing us as living, breathing reminders of this nation’s failed immigration policies, and find it so easy to do because we’re not gabachos. Nearly all of us are from America’s eternal and modern-day enemies: Red China, the Middle East and Latin America, especially Mexico. And such facts expose what’s really freaking out the right: the destiny of demographics.
From the the ratification of the 14th Amendment to the origins of the term “anchor babies” (used as “anchor children” to slur Vietnamese-American refugees – those immigrants that the GOP nowadays say came to this country the “right” way), to the present-day, birthright citizenship has always been a battlefield for politicians to try to deny citizenship to the latest non-whites clamoring to become American. Now, candidates are again raising the issue – even candidates of color, like Bobby Jindal and Marco Rubio, who are gleefully lambasting the US-born children of undocumented immigrants in a vain attempt to prove they can be as bigoted as the people whose votes they desire. But this is just a last-gasp, futile effort to stop the Anchor Baby Nation from dawning. Numbers already show that American children will be majority-minority by 2020. By trashing immigrant kiddies, Donald Trump and his ilk think they can will this reality from happening. From the the ratification of the 14th Amendment to the origins of the term “anchor babies” (used as “anchor children” to slur Vietnamese-American refugees – those immigrants that the GOP nowadays say came to this country the “right” way), to the present-day, birthright citizenship has always been a battlefield for politicians to try to deny citizenship to the latest non-whites clamoring to become American.
It’ll all be OK, guys. Take my family, for example. My maternal grandmother was born in Arizona to two Mexicans who had fled the Mexican Revolution but returned there when my abuelita was seven. When she and my grandfather decided to migrate to the US in the early 1960s with their children (my mom, aunts and uncles), the process was incredibly simple on account of my grandmother’s American citizenship, never mind that she hadn’t lived here since the 1920s. Indeed, an entire generation of Mexicans from my maternal ancestral village entered Los Estados Unidos in this manner. My mom was a permanent resident when she married my father, who came to this country illegally not once, not twice, not thrice, even more times than that. I’m the oldest of four Anchor Arellanos. Now, candidates are again raising the issue – even candidates of color, like Bobby Jindal and Marco Rubio, who are gleefully lambasting the US-born children of undocumented immigrants in a vain attempt to prove they can be as bigoted as the people whose votes they desire. But this is just a last-gasp, futile effort to stop the Anchor Baby Nation from dawning. Numbers already show that American children will be majority-minority by 2020. By trashing immigrant kiddies, Donald Trump and his ilk think they can will this reality from happening.
It’ll all be OK, guys. Take my family, for example. My maternal grandmother was born in Arizona to two Mexicans who had fled the Mexican Revolution but returned there when my abuelita was seven. When she and my grandfather decided to migrate to the US in the early 1960s with their children (my mom, aunts and uncles), the process was incredibly simple on account of my grandmother’s American citizenship, never mind that she hadn’t lived here since the 1920s.
Indeed, an entire generation of Mexicans from my maternal ancestral village entered Los Estados Unidos in this manner. My mom was a permanent resident when she married my father, who came to this country illegally not once, not twice, not thrice, even more times than that. I’m the oldest of four Anchor Arellanos.
We didn’t live up to the GOP hype, though. We didn’t get my parents citizenship – Reagan’s 1986 amnesty took care of that. And we didn’t qualify them for a lifetime of government cheese – they preferred hard labor as a tomato canner (Mom) and truck driver (Dad). Instead, we served as the weight that helped my parents understand this country – we forced them to learn English, as our Spanish waned; we translated documents that navigated them through this country’s byzantine tax codes and healthcare system; we taught them enough American politics so that they forsook their conservative leanings every election year and voted Democrat (You’re welcome, Hillary). And we aren’t the exception; we’re the rule.We didn’t live up to the GOP hype, though. We didn’t get my parents citizenship – Reagan’s 1986 amnesty took care of that. And we didn’t qualify them for a lifetime of government cheese – they preferred hard labor as a tomato canner (Mom) and truck driver (Dad). Instead, we served as the weight that helped my parents understand this country – we forced them to learn English, as our Spanish waned; we translated documents that navigated them through this country’s byzantine tax codes and healthcare system; we taught them enough American politics so that they forsook their conservative leanings every election year and voted Democrat (You’re welcome, Hillary). And we aren’t the exception; we’re the rule.
So of course the GOP wants to deny, if not outright revoke, birthright citizenship to people like me. They want to deny us the opportunity to amass the numbers to vote them out of office. I and millions of other have grown up in an era where an entire political party has pegged our entire families as little better than terrorists – and we’ll never forget. Where we already have the electoral numbers, our political vengeance has been merciless against the GOP; witness California after its electoral dalliance with anti-immigrant policies or Mitt Romney’s disastrous 2012 campaign. The GOP knows this, and they certainly don’t want this to happen nationwide. So of course the Republicans want to deny, if not outright revoke, birthright citizenship to people like me. They want to deny us the opportunity to amass the numbers to vote them out of office. I and millions of other have grown up in an era where an entire political party has pegged our entire families as little better than terrorists – and we’ll never forget. Where we already have the electoral numbers, our political vengeance has been merciless against the GOP; witness California after its electoral dalliance with anti-immigrant policies or Mitt Romney’s disastrous 2012 campaign. The GOP knows this, and they certainly don’t want this to happen nationwide.
None of this means I’m blind to bona fide birth tourism. Here in Southern California, the feds have cracked down on pregnant Chinese women who hole up in fancy apartment complexes for months. And no less a law-breaker than Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman can boast about gaming the system; in 2011, his beauty-queen wife gave birth to twin girls in a Los Angeles County hospital (it should be noted that his wife was already an American citizen; it should also be noted that the feds were fully aware of this and allowed it to happen).None of this means I’m blind to bona fide birth tourism. Here in Southern California, the feds have cracked down on pregnant Chinese women who hole up in fancy apartment complexes for months. And no less a law-breaker than Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman can boast about gaming the system; in 2011, his beauty-queen wife gave birth to twin girls in a Los Angeles County hospital (it should be noted that his wife was already an American citizen; it should also be noted that the feds were fully aware of this and allowed it to happen).
But such cases are relatively rare. A Pew Research Center 2010 study estimated that there were about 340,000 births to undocumented parents in 2010 (about 8% of all babies born that year), with more than 80% of them born to people who had lived in the US for over a year. Don’t get distracted by the GOP parade, conservatives: we anchor babies are as American as you are, if not more so. After all, what’s more patriotic than proving pendejo politicians wrong?But such cases are relatively rare. A Pew Research Center 2010 study estimated that there were about 340,000 births to undocumented parents in 2010 (about 8% of all babies born that year), with more than 80% of them born to people who had lived in the US for over a year. Don’t get distracted by the GOP parade, conservatives: we anchor babies are as American as you are, if not more so. After all, what’s more patriotic than proving pendejo politicians wrong?