CANADIAN QUADS U.S. CITIZENS

When Canadian Karen Jepp gave birth to identical quadruplets girls in Montana last week because the neo-natal intensive care facility at her local hospital was full, Journal Sentinel columnist Patrick McIlerhan used it as an example of the failure of Canada's national health care system.
Lost in the news is that the $200,000 cost of delivering the children in America (vs. $66,000 in Canada) will be borne by the Canadian health care system, which will pay the American hospital. If the Jepp family had been Americans, they quite likely would have faced a personal hardship covering a $200,000 bill, and the hospital could have been stiffed, or the family could have been forced to "sell" their story to cover their bills.
But that's a minor point.
What McIlheran failed to note is that by allowing Jepp to give birth to her children here, the United States of America now has four brand new citizens, according to the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. They can move across the border any time they want, take jobs away from our people, marry our menfolk, and vote for president beginning in 2028. He skips over that completely.
Now, to use the old conservative "what if?" rhetorical device [their only rhetorical device] on a conservative himself:
What if the woman about to give birth to quadruplets were a resident of, say, Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico, instead of Calgary, Alberta, Canada? Let us say the Mexican government-controlled hospital's neo-natal intensive care unit was filled to capacity, just like the government-controlled Canadian one was. What would McIlheran say if that mother were to be flown to the United States to give birth? (Or do only Canadians fly, and all Mexicans enter the country illegally?)
If he were to applaud such a south of the border measure with the same vigor he gives to the recent Canadian example, it would pit him squarely against the party line of his fellow conservatives.
A conservative organization says Mexicans who come to this country to give birth to American-born "Anchor babies," cost the U.S. $5 billion in delivery costs last year, and calls for repeal of the automatic citizenship conveyed by the 14th amendment. (They call them "Anchor Babies," since it is believed that pregnant women intentionally come to America to give birth to exploit the 14th amendment's citizenship provisions, and for no other reason. Their firstborn become the anchor to the parents' aspirations to colonize this country.)
So it's okay for Canadians to give birth to U.S. citizens, because their inefficient government health care system will reimburse us, and they'll go home to Canada anyway. But it's not okay for Mexicans to give birth in the United States, because we won't get paid, and the Anchor babies will stay here to take over the same part of the United States of America that we so determinedly stole from their ancestors 160 years ago. Anchor babies bad!
--Michael Horne