Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Immigration Reform on PA Legislative Agenda

According to the New York Times, at least five states plan to begin an unusual coordinated effort to cancel automatic United States citizenship for children born in this country to illegal immigrant parents.

Among the states expected to introduce bills similar to Arizona’s are Georgia, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and South Carolina.

A leader of the effort is Daryl Metcalfe, a Republican state representative from Pennsylvania. At a recent news conference, Mr. Metcalfe said his goal was to eliminate “an anchor baby status, in which an illegal alien invader comes into our country and has a child on our soil that is granted citizenship automatically," reported the Times.

Many who support immigration reform cite the impact of illegal immigration on crime rates particularly along the southwest border with Mexico. If crime rates are any indication, legal and illegal immigration have had a positive impact on America’s border cities.

Last year, there were three murders in El Paso, Texas a city of about 600,000 residents. Just across the Rio Grande in Juarez, Mexico there were 3,000 murders. Baltimore a city comparable in size to El Paso had 210 murders. In Phoenix, the capital of Arizona, a hotbed of immigration reform, the city was on pace to finish the year with fewer than 100 murders, down about 25 percent from 2009.

Why exactly is Pennsylvania or any other state for that matter considering Arizona like immigration reform?

To read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/01/us/01immig.html?_r=2&pagewanted=print

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