By Jenny Patiño –

I remember I cried the first time I heard the term “anchor baby.” Maybe about three years ago, I was flipping channels and landed on an alarmist report being featured on CNN.

It was all about how “illegals” were sneaking into the U.S. and having children in order to have a foothold in our welfare system. Flashing on the bottom of the screen was a headline that read something along the lines of “How Anchor Babies Are Ruining America.”

There was just so much wrong with that entire report. Let’s face it. I would expect something like that from Fox News. But up until then I had trusted CNN so I knew that people out there watching this report would most likely believe it. On top of that, it was the first time I was hearing this slur for American citizens born to undocumented immigrants. I was devastated.

The report made it sound as if greedy immigrants somewhere out there were plotting to have children they didn’t even want in order to scam the government and to become citizens themselves.  It made it sound like “illegals,” another slur, didn’t have a conscience and were a direct threat to the tax dollars of those viewing the report. All in a thirty second package, CNN had managed to legitimize hurtful slurs and stereotypes and pass them off as a credible threat. I will never forget that “report.”

I cried because I am an American, and it felt like fellow Americans were trying to deny my legitimacy to that title. Sure, sometimes I don’t like being an American. There are many things this country does that are shameful. But like it or not, this is the country where I was born. It felt like I had been personally attacked.

It was three years ago that I applied for my parents to get their residency. It had been a long struggle for my parents. They had tried all other possible avenues to legitimize their status. It wasn’t until I turned 21 that I was legally old enough to put in an application for them-not exactly the get rich quick scheme that the term “anchor baby” implies.

So I could continue to see the term “anchor baby” as a personal attack. I could get caught up in my anger at the right wing racism and try to defend my parents, pointing out how they never used my privilege as a citizen to get welfare and how they have paid their taxes while working. I could bring up how it is just as erroneous to assume a majority of immigrants have babies in the U.S. to get welfare benefits as it is for Gov. Jan Brewer to claim that the majority of immigrants crossing the border are drug mules.

I could even make the claim that if there ARE any immigrants out there systematically benefiting from the welfare system, that means that there are plenty of American citizens who are doing the same. I could point out all these things in detail and at length and they would be true. But all that this would accomplish is to further legitimize the “anchor baby” argument.

Instead, let us deconstruct the term and look at it in context.

It was about three years ago that Elvira Arellano and the sanctuary movement first made headlines. She fought deportation by refusing to choose between leaving her son Saul Arellano, an American citizen in the U.S. or taking him to Mexico with her. She took sanctuary in Chicago’s Adalberto United Methodist Church and spoke out against the raids that were separating families.

The “anchor baby” argument is a direct attempt to vilify these same families Elvira Arellano and other organizers are advocating for.

It is difficult for any American to look on TV and see the weeping faces of children whose families are being torn apart. Making children suffer is wrong. It is a basic human instinct to want to protect them. On top of that, realizing that these children are American citizens means that American children are suffering. The term “anchor baby” is meant to short circuit this realization. It seeks to invalidate their claims to American identity, as well as to humanity.

Over the past decade, America has developed a long trend of dehumanizing certain groups with labels such as “terrorist,” “insurgent,” “enemy combatant,” and “illegals” in order to simplify complex human and legal interactions for the media. “Anchor baby” is no different. It turns an image of a weeping child, deserving of our help into that of a veiled threat, a literal anchor keeping dangerous invaders within our borders and supposedly draining our funds.

It’s pathetic, but this hateful use of stereotypes, regardless of reality, is the argument that the right wing wants to use to side step the legal rights of American citizens and their families.

And leave it to Arizona to lead the way in trampling the Constitution. Basing its arguments on the anchor baby myth, Arizona officials are claiming that allowing the children of illegal aliens to claim citizenship is a misapplication of the 14^th Amendment that grants citizenship on the basis of being born on American soil.

It is once again ignoring the division of federal and state power in its proposal to pass a law denying citizenship to the children who don’t have at least one parent who is a citizenship.  This is despite the fact that the 14^th Amendment clearly reads that “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” Way to go Arizona.

Essentially Arizonans are angry because upon reaching the age of 21, “anchor babies” can make their parents citizens. Well, Arizona, remember how you’re all angry about people crossing into the country illegally? Well, this is a LEGAL pathway to citizenship. Clearly, Arizonans don’t care about the legality of our status—or even of their own actions.

They don’t want us here, period and will twist and turn their rhetoric any which way to justify their actions. The media is often right their to take extremists at their word.

This is why I advocate that we stop accepting the labels we have been given by the media. When I first heard the term “anchor baby” I cried—and crying certainly isn’t enough. For those of us who are American citizens, we need to very vocally reject this term as the racial slur that it is. (Same goes for “illegals”)  I suggest that if you hear or see the term “anchor baby” being taken seriously in broadcast or in print, you contact the station or write a letter to the editor repudiating their bias and racism.

Donate to the ACLU if you are able, since they are one of the plaintiffs suing Arizona over the draconian SB 1070. We cannot allow this national debate to be framed without us. We cannot allow ourselves and those we love to be dehumanized in this way. We are not “anchor babies,” we are American citizens—whether the racists like it or not.

Jenny Patiño is a student at Columbia College Chicago.