(Congress reconvenes on September 13. In the meantime, this issue should be widely discussed. Please re-post this article. If you would like to publish it, please email me at sallydarity at yahoo dotcom)

Invasion by Birth Canal?

The fourteenth amendment and its opponents’ motivations

by stacy/sallydarity

Russell Pearce, the Arizona Senator who pushed the “Support Our Law Enforcement” immigration bill (known in Arizona as SB 1070), complains about the automatically-given U.S. citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants. “This is an orchestrated effort by [illegal aliens] to come here and have children to gain access to the great welfare state we’ve created,” he huffed.[1]

Doesn’t Pearce’s comment sound eerily similar to that of this Southern legislator, pre-civil rights movement? “In 1958, Mississippi state representative David H. Glass introduced a bill mandating sterilization for any unmarried mother who gave birth to another illegitimate child. Glass explained that his objective was to reduce the number of Black children on welfare: …‘The negro woman, because of child welfare assistance, [is] making it a business, in some cases of giving birth to illegitimate children.’”[2]

Pearce, probably feeling empowered by SB 1070’s semi-success (or at least its public support), is working on a controversial plan to “push for an Arizona bill that would refuse to accept or issue a birth certificate that recognizes citizenship to those born to illegal aliens, unless one parent is a citizen”[3]. Perhaps also inspired by the anti-immigrant fervor, Senators John Kyl and Lindsey Graham are proposing that the U.S. Senate review the Citizenship Clause of the 14th amendment. The idea of withholding citizenship to children born of undocumented parents goes back to 1991 when Elton Gallegly proposed the idea to the California congress, followed by several other unsuccessful attempts.[4]

Birthright citizenship is said to reward illegality and encourage procreation for the purpose of accessing the privileges the U.S. has to offer, such as welfare. The underlying attitudes follow an ongoing pattern of attacks on the reproductive freedom of women of color. This is all part of an effort to contain, exclude, and criminalize undocumented immigrants--specifically women due to their reproductive potential. Appealing to Americans’ sense of being cheated, the topic of welfare has been used politically with hidden racial motives. People of color and immigrants have been criminalized even though immigrants’ draw on public services is insubstantial. The topic of overpopulation draws on white Americans’ fear of being outnumbered or overpowered and has been used to control women’s fertility, especially restricting the reproductive freedom of women of color in the U.S and internationally. The problems of poverty and environment are said to necessitate the containment of certain populations, while in actuality the major perpetrators of these problems seek to limit the self-determination of targeted populations to continue to profit off them and their resources.

Read more...

If for some reason it had not yet been time to really address the concept of citizenship, now is the time. Once congress is back in session, birthright citizenship will be the next hot topic of debate. The 14th amendment gave ex-slaves and their children the citizenship they did not have before, and has since applied to anyone born on US soil (aside from a few cases), including the racist-tizzy-inducing undocumented immigrants' children, called by the derogatory term, "anchor babies".

The focus on birthright citizenship, if it does not succeed in changing the 14th amendment, may have a chance at shifting the debate in the favor of the racists. They not only want to remove all undocumented immigrants from the country, but their children as well. While they claim that their concern is over the law ('Illegal is not a race, it's a crime', Pearce says) as of right now, the so-called "anchor babies" have not committed any crime, yet they are to be ousted as well. The immigrants' rights movement will find it necessary to focus on defending the children of undocumented parents and retreat from the defense of undocumented immigrants themselves. This may look similar to the hierarchy created between the more deserving and the less deserving created by the debate around the Dream Act. We cannot allow them to shift the debate in this way. We need to shift it in the direction of questioning the concept of citizenship and the legitimacy of the country in the first place.

So we must ask, what does citizenship mean? We should especially ask this in the context of the fact that the US is on stolen land. What does it mean for some settlers to seize a bunch of land and declare that they are citizens and the original peoples are not (it took a while for indigenous people to be counted as citizens even after ex-slaves were included), and then continue to do this to many people who are in fact more indigenous to this continent than the settlers are. Not only are they withholding citizenship and the rights and privileges it entails; they are criminalizing most of the folks who reside in the US who are not citizens. This means detention centers, deportation, fear, etc. Citizenship is based on theft, domination, and criminalization.

Certainly there are many of us who are counted as citizens who do not have allegiance to the US government. However, in many ways citizenship is about loyalty to this system. In what ways can we call this into question? This all deserves much more attention and discussion.

Please watch for my article called "Invasion by Birth Canal" which should be posted in the next week or so.

US out of North America!

Action! -

6 people cited after protest at Border Patrol Headquarters

Submitted by chaparral on Sat, 05/22/2010 - 5:32pm

6 people cited after protest at Border Patrol Headquarters - KVOA

TUCSON - At least eight people who initially refused to leave the lobby of the Border Patrol headquarters at Davis-Monthan Airforce Base, have been cited and released by the Tucson Police Department.

Protestors are still demonstrating outside of the building.

The demonstrators say they are protesting SB 1070 and any military presence at the border.
(click image for full-size)

In a statement they said, "The militarized border imposed by the U.S. has lead only to cultural and environmental destruction of the indigenous peoples whose land is on or near the border."

These are pictures taken by our crew on the scene.

The protestors inside chained themselves to a pillar in the lobby. They left the building after 4 hours.

In an effort to be balanced, News 4 reached out to Border Patrol, but were told no comment will be released about the incident.

[Resistance to SB1070]

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