How has U.S. law dealt with this current wave of immigration?
Cristina Rodriguez: Marcelo’s focus on institutions is an important one because it explains a lot of the anxiety over immigration today. In states and localities, people feel like institutions, primarily the public education system, are being strained by large scale immigration. There are two legal principles that are driving the debate. One is the birthright rule of citizenship, the notion that anyone born inside the United States is an American citizen. That is a source of concern is because it means that children born of undocumented immigrants are automatically citizens. There’s a movement in some states to try to challenge that very basic rule of American citizenship, and I think that it would certainly be declared unconstitutional if it ever were to reach the court. The second legal principle stems from a court case called Plyler vs. Doe which was decided by the Supreme Court in 1982 in response to a Texas state law that would have denied access to immigrant children to the publi
Related Questions
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- How has U.S. law dealt with this current wave of immigration?
