Repeal right to 'anchor babies'

A segment on the NBC Nightly News recently covered a story about the FBI investigation of a Chinese man who may be organizing tourist trips for pregnant Chinese women who come to the U.S. and have their babies so that the babies automatically get U.S. citizenship.

Their citizenship then entitles the grown babies to passports and access to U.S. college educations and whatever other U.S. benefits a dual citizenship may afford them. They estimate as many as 8,000 of these babies may have been born here so far.

The surprising part is that it is completely legal to do this as a tourist here. The unspoken thing is that it has been going on for decades. The numbers are probably in the hundreds of thousands or even millions of babies.

I don't know who the people were that passed the original law or bill allowing "anchor babies" to automatically become U.S. citizens, but that law or bill can and should be thrown out. If the parents are not citizens, their babies should not automatically be. Our U.S. citizenship doesn't mean much if all you have to do is cross our borders and have a child.

Applying for and being granted U.S. citizenship by our government should be the only legal way for foreign nationals to obtain it.

Alan Devereaux

Bartlett