Birthright citizenship: continue or terminate?

The Republican proposal to end birthright citizenship (Dec. 10) is an insult to all Latinos and a rejection of everything so many Americans have fought for. Once the government conditions citizenship on your being able to prove how your parents entered the country, millions of people of every ethnicity could lose citizenship. This proposal is a threat to every person who has a parent born outside the country. If President Bush does not oppose this proposal vigorously, he will lose whatever credibility he has left.

STANTON J. PRICE

Glendale

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It is a fact, especially in the border states, California among them, that many arrive here illegally and give birth at public hospitals with the result being a new American citizen. A soon as that happens, the baby is entitled to state-mandated medical benefits, and the parents are entitled to benefits to care for the newborn. Are we to pay for this? The 14th Amendment to the Constitution ratified in 1868 was specifically created to protect emancipated slaves from being sent back to Africa. That action was necessary and just. Now, however, it is well known that many come to the U.S. specifically to give birth. So the question is twofold: Did our forefathers contemplate the illegal immigration boondoggle that exists today? And does the Constitution really require we pay a myriad of taxpayer benefits because someone managed to beat the race over the border? Please explain why this particular situation is racist, as you state.

RACHEL GOLD

Studio City

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Some conservatives want to do away with birthright citizenship to discourage illegal immigration, even by those who come here only to work their way to a better life. “The New Colossus” is the poem on the Statue of Liberty. We truly are turning into a new and worse kind of colossus. The poem must be rewritten: “Give me not your tired and poor, but those with money, or more. Keep your masses huddled, yearning to breathe free. And if the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, the homeless, tempest-tossed, reach my golden door, burden me not with their children, evermore.”

IRA SPIRO

Los Angeles

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How can The Times use the word “conservative” to describe advocates of changing our Constitution and our traditional right of citizenship for people born here? No one should confuse the issue by calling it conservative. There are serious and valid arguments for and against the position advocated by Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), but whether he is liberal or conservative on other issues, it distorts the meaning of conservative to lump this fight in with such traditional conservative issues as the free market, less government and an emphasis on law and order.

Doing so simply muddies the water and obscures rational argument on an issue that deserves independent analysis.

VINCENT THORPE

Woodland Hills