Tom Tancredo: “CBS News recently ran an expose on the growing phenomenon of illegal aliens entering the United States in order to give…”

“CBS News recently ran an expose on the growing phenomenon of illegal aliens entering the United States in order to give birth to a child. The segment shed some light on what has become an increasingly costly burden to the United States taxpayer. An estimated 300,000 children of illegal aliens are born in this country every year, largely because of a misguided policy of so-called ``birthright citizenship.'' This peculiar policy confers U.S. citizenship on any child born here regardless of what country their parents are from or whether those parents are here in the United States legally. We are one of few--in fact, we may be the only country now that still provides for this particular kind of citizenship. And it's based on a very strange sort of interpretation of the 14th amendment, one part of the 14th amendment in particular. We all recognize of course that when the 14th amendment was written there was no such thing as illegal immigration. Certainly, there could have been no reference to it in the amendment itself. And what we need to do, frankly, is to pass legislation in this House and in the Senate, and the President needs to sign it, outlawing this practice and this habit, really, that we have gotten into, which is more than anything else a phenomenon of custom more than it is of actual law or analysis of the legal system or the Constitution of the United States. We should pass legislation to outlaw it and let it be tested at the Supreme Court.”