Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
U.S. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) says he will quickly move a bill aimed at denying citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants who are born in the United States once he becomes chairman of the congressional subcommittee that oversees immigration in January.
Those children are currently automatically granted citizenship at birth under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which says all person “born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”
In an interview with Douglas Burns for Cityview, King said he plans to pass a law concerning birthright citizenship and wait for opponents to challenge the bill in court. If the court sides against him, King said he would then move to amend the U.S. Constitution to change the statute.
From Cityview:
King went on to say that automatic citizenship, which results in what he called “anchor babies” for illegal immigrant parents, is a “habit of the heart so to speak.”
“The framers did not consider the babies of illegals when they framed the 14th amendment because we didn’t have immigration law at the time so they could not have wanted to confer automatic citizenship on the babies of people who were unlawfully in the United States,” King said.
It’s important to note that children can’t sponsor their parents for citizenship until they turn 21. And since undocumented immigrants have to return home for 10 years before applying to come back to the U.S., having a baby to secure citizenship is an extremely long and uncertain process.
And as Robin Templeton reports at The Nation, having an “anchor baby” doesn’t do much as far as garnering federal benefits.
Federal welfare reform passed in 1996 disqualified most immigrants, including most legal permanent residents, from receiving almost all forms of public assistance and imposed a five-year waiting period on applications for assistance on all future immigrants. Researchers estimate that these new restrictions accounted for more than half of the vaunted savings during the first year of welfare reform.
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