With the recent two incidents involving right wing Christian terrorists in this country*, and the total suppression, as usual, of their political affiliations by the mainstream press, I thought it would be beneficial to take a few minutes to consider briefly the history of these two groups, the Sovereign Citizen movement and the Christian Identity "religion." This is not a complete story- the Christian Identity movement is an outgrowth of the British Israelite movement, which since the 1870's was based on the absurd claim that Northern Europeans were the real descendants of the Jews in the bible. Various explanations have been given about where today's Jews came from, some going so far as to claim that Jews (and black people too, of course) are actually not human beings at all, but spawns of an affair which Satan supposedly had with Eve, which is why God ejected Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Well, enough of this idiocy, on with the story. First, with Chri...
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Originally, the term didn't indicate the immigration status of the parents. Indeed, the "anchor" referred to the American-born offspring of Vietnamese "boat people."
HOWEVER . . .
The ultra-reactionaries have turned its meaning to "American-born offspring of immigration law violators, especially those churned out for the purpose of keeping said violators in the United States so they can leech off taxpaying citizens."
As Drum points out, "If anchor babies are basically a myth, then the term is obviously a slur. There's no reason to make up this name for something that never (or very rarely) happens except as a way of demeaning a class of people and appealing to crude xenophobia. But if it does happen, then it makes sense to have a term for it. Otherwise you can't even talk about the subject sensibly."
Since (a) having an American-born child is not a defense against being deported, and (b) immigrants use public services at a lower rate than people born in the United States, the reactionaries' idea of "anchor babies" is a lie and myth; hence the use of the term is racist.