East Asian Immigration Research Paper

From its inception, the United States has been built on the laborious backs of successive immigrants. Through the gruesome capture and expansion of British colonies to the ostentatious use of African American immigrant slaves to service the fields of preconceived Irish-American immigrants, and even of the opportunistic Gold Rush and its attraction of East Asian immigrants that swept in an era of controversy similar to that of their employers, immigrants have been at the heart, at the cusp of each and every battle, and at the last swindle of this nation. Yet an issue which has deeply embedded itself in immigration is one that stems from vagueness in the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. Now more commonly deemed as “birth tourism”,
the act of immigrants procreating on American soil, giving birth to birth-granted citizens under jus soli as outlined in the previous amendment, has become the center for great controversy in immigration policy. The children of these “tourists” also have a pejorative term of their own, “anchor babies” as their often known, stems from the purported ability of immigrants to secure citizenship due to a parental dependency. As one would imagine, this simple yet effective loophole has sparked excessive debate and this conundrum has been classified as a piece of the puzzle to illegal immigration.