Should I do another poll?

Thanks to everyone who participated in my poll. It's by no means scientific, but it looks like real Christmas trees win out over the fake ones.

I participate in Zogby polls that arrive in my Inbox about once a week or so. Yesterday I was asked this question and I felt that it was a terrible question:

For the next question, please consider the following scenario: A child of illegal immigrants is born in the United States and is thereby a citizen of the United States. The parents of that child are arrested and charged with being in the U.S. illegally. What should happen to the parents under those circumstances?

• The parents should be deported and the child should be placed in foster care here in the U.S.
• The parents should be deported and forced to take the child with them
• The child should remain in the U.S. and the parents should be allowed to undergo a naturalization process
• Not sure

By itself, it wasn't a terrible questions, but there weren't any follow up questions that could flesh out the issue better. So I thought I'd bring it up here.

I chose "The child should remain in the U.S. and the parents should be allowed to undergo a naturalization process."

But while think that while the child should remain in the US, I do think that the parents should have to bear a penalty for breaking the law. Obviously, the government can't remove the child away from his or her parents. That would cause more problems. Also, the government can not abandon one of its own citizens so deportation with the parents is out of the question. Personally, I think the parents should be allowed to apply for permanent residency but they should be forever barred from citizenship.

What I'd like to see happen is a passage of a constitutional amendment that gets rid of jus soli or, at least, modifies it. For the foreigners, the Constitution of the United States in Amendment 14, Section 1 says, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States..."* Basically, if you're born in the US, you are automatically given citizenship. This is exploited many illegal immigrants, particularly from Mexico, who will come over the border, have a child, and use that child as their anchor in the US.

My preference would be to keep jus soli as long as at least one parent is a citizen or if both are permanent residents. What do you think?





*Unless you were born in the Philippines from 1898 to 1946 in which case you don't count.