in article 40F15D53.6040401@hotmail.com, Declan Murphy at
declan_murphy@hotmail.com wrote on 7/12/04 12:31 AM:

> Ernest Schaal wrote:
> 
>> I agree with your that my examples have been US, primarily because that is
>> law I know the most and because it is one of the more open immigration
>> systems. You call the US a silly country, but it has traditionally had a
>> much more open system for accepting immigrants, granting permanent resident
>> visas, and granting citizenship than most other countries.
> 
> Being relatively open doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of silliness
> in policy. Deporting a dependant child is disturbing, greencard
> lotteries amusing, paranoia frustrating, but all are still silly.
> Perhaps its because the level of immigration into the USA (as well as
> the level of foreign born residents) is much lower in per capita terms
> when compared to quite a few other OECD countries than almost all
> sepponians seem to believe.

I don't know if the adjective "silly" is the correct one. There are parts of
the immigration law I disagree with, but that doesn't make it "silly."

>> The second story is in Ireland, which recently modified its law so that not
>> all people born in Ireland are citizens. Apparently, from the BBC stories, it
>> was the only EU country having such automatic citizenship for birth there,
>> and was being "misused" by tourists who come there specifically to give birth
>> there so that the children will be citizens of a EU country.
> 
> Except that the way the referendum result has been reported to American
> readers (including the international editions of the BBC) appears to be
> somewhat out of context. Ireland's prior policy was in mostly related to
> the treaty following the division of the island following the
> Anglo-Irish war, with quite different intent when compared to the raison
> d'entre behind the "born in USA=citizen" policy. It took about 30
> minutes for me to obtain an Irish passport despite never having lived in
> Ireland, even though I'm registered in Japan as Irish, and under the new
> policy nothing would change. There is no way Ireland could continue to
> have its own substantially differentiated immigration policies and
> abolish passport controls between it and EU countries.

I said the law was recently modified, I didn't say the modification was
already in effect. I was just talking with an Ireland-born Irishman on
Saturday night, and he was telling people that if they wanted Irish
citizenship (assuming they were entitled to it) they had better get it now
because of the law change.