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.

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.

-- 
"You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on"