Resolved: Birthright citizenship should be abolished in the United States.

I will begin by rebuilding my case, then I will go on to attack my opponent's. Rebuilding: contention one: My opponent says that citizenship does not entail a right to Medicaid, temporary and immediate assistance to needy families, food stamps and schooling, but perhaps he forgot that he defined "Citizen" as "a member of a free city of jural society, possessing all the rights and privileges which can be enjoyed by any person under its constitution and government. .. " He goes on to say that "Most of these policy-driven fiscal and social incentives of citizenship can be removed. " The right to Medicaid, food stamps, schooling, and everything else are given to all U. S. citizens, whether they have legal parents or not. What my opponent is suggesting, removing those rights, would mean removing it from everyone - as in legitimate, all American kids would no longer have their rights to school, Medicaid, etc. Unless, of course, he only means the rights would be confiscated from anchor babies and their parents. My response to this is that you cannot remove benefits of citizenship from one group of people. That would be ludicrous and by definition, discriminatory. The only option is to not give citizenship based merely upon the soil they were born, requiring no other criteria. Rebuilding: contention two: My opponent implies that I manipulated Senator Jacob Howard's quote by omitting the last sentence of his quote. I'd like to remind everyone that if I wanted to quote a sentence from the Declaration of Independence, I would not include the entire document. I would include only the relevant points of the document. The last sentence of the quote does not have any bearing on this topic. My opponent says that Howard was "clearly in support of the contemporary, mainstream interpretation of the 14th amendment," and justifies it with the last sentence of the quote, ". .. but will include every other class of persons. " This is simply wrong. See, I might believe that too, had Howard not said "This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers. .. ." When Howard says it will include "every other class of persons," he meant people who were NOT foreigners or aliens, therefore, the sentence is irrelevant to the topic. It's funny that my opponent tried to accuse me of omission, when in his last sentence of this attack said "As we can see, Howard was very clearly in support of the contemporary mainstream interpretation of the 14th amendment, which supports birthright citizenship with the exception of ambassadors and foreign ministers. " Aren't you forgetting something along with ambassadors and foreign ministers? How about foreigners and aliens? That sounds omissive on your part. Rebuilding: contention three: My opponent says that "The point of the contention (he meant resolution) is whether or not there was a problem with birthright citizenship. " and that he feels no obligation to argue it. If I remember correctly, the resolution was "Resolved: Birthright citizenship should be abolished in the United States. " Not "Do we have a problem with birthright citizenship? " Therefore, my third contention was 100% topical. My opponent did not attack my third contention, which means by default that he drops and agrees with my third contention. I will now move on to attack my opponents case. Attacking: his contention one: My opponent starts off his paragraph with the information that an anchor baby has to wait until they're 21 to sponsor his parents for immigration status. However, cis. com states that the presence of an anchor baby often causes a judge to grant legal status to an alien who would not get it otherwise, and when there's a presence of an anchor baby in the household of an illegal alien, officials are less likely to deport the parent of the child than they are to deport an alien who is otherwise similar, but childless. They can also marry in Mexico and immediately bring their spouse and children. My opponent's whole point to this paragraph is that anchor babies do not actually benefit greatly from birthright citizenship, so let's remind him of the benefits: Medicaid, temporary and immediate assistance to needy families and food stamps, schooling, and other welfares. Their parents are given priority over other people waiting naturalization tests via the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. They have the right to vote, international protection, access to good jobs, student aid, all constitutional rights, need I go on? I'm not saying that U. S. citizens have a gold mansion and are fed grapes by naked women. My point is that while the U. S. isn't entirely perfect, it's a hell of a lot better than the quality of life elsewhere. Unauthorized immigrants and their children DO benefit greatly. Attacking: his contention two: His entire contention is about what would happen if we repealed the fourteenth amendment. You know what, maybe that's a tiny bit valid. .. . If I was advocating repealing the 14th amendment. This entire contention is invalid because he's arguing against a point I never made. I never said we'd repeal birthright citizenship, I said we'd adopt European citizenship laws in replacement, which means any child born of the soil can enjoy citizenship ---- as long as they have at least one parent that is a citizen. He provides a statistic and immediately tells us the harms associated with said statistic. However, there is no warrant. There is no link between the statistic and the harm. And honestly, I'm not trying to advocate repealing the clause. I'm advocating replacing the clause with U. K. laws. Attacking: his conclusion: He says my job was to affirm the resolution. I'd like to refer you to my first two contentions, which are affirming the resolution. I have done my job. However, I went above and beyond what was expected of me by reassuring everyone that there if a safe and harm-free way to deal with the situation; adopting U. K. citizenship laws. After all, my opponent did decide that we were doing policy debate. My opponent admitted that there were harms associated with birthright citizenship by saying "I put forward the proposition that immigrants are not primarily incentivized by the possibility of birthright citizenship for their children due to the heavy risks and ramifications it carries. " This is a straight up, black and white admission that birthright citizenship has risks and ramifications. This is a broken system, and my opponent agrees. My own conclusion: Anchor babies get immense perks from the birthright citizenship clause. My opponent failed to address the economic harms they provide to the U. S. My opponent accused me of omission, then omitted part of the quote himself when he tried to correct me. My opponent dropped my third contention entirely and said it was irrelevant by slyly rewording the resolution. Sneaky sneaky. My opponent's first contention talked about how anchor babies don't get great benefits, and tried to prove this entire claim based on the fact that they can't bring their parents for a few years. My opponent's second contention argued upon a claim I did not make. In his conclusion, he admitted that birthright citizenship had "risks and ramifications. " I'd like to stress, more than anything, that my proposition to switch to U. K. laws was not attacked.