Mitt Romney’s fervent plea for “self-deportation” of illegal immigrants during this week’s Republican presidential debate has brought a boatload of attention to “Patriots for Self-Deportation.”
That’s a fairly new organization that’s encouraging American citizens who were born here but have ancestors who arrived illegally to “self-deport” as a mark of their patriotic fervor and then “reapply” for citizenship.
Of course, that can get a bit complicated because you’d first have to give up your American citizenship to reapply for American citizenship.
Despite such difficulties, Patriots for Self-Deportation has spawned a host of admirers who for some reason consider the group to be satirical in nature.
“I think that sometimes people, when faced with really radical political beliefs, refuse to take it seriously,” says Jennifer Ricci, one of the group’s volunteers.
Romney’s “self-deportation” comments focused on another sort of idea, that of urging undocumented immigrants to return to their home countries by making it increasingly difficult for them to get work in the U.S.
During the Florida debate, Romney said it would happen when “people decide they can do better by going home because they can’t find work here because they don’t have legal documentation to allow them to work here.”
Of course, that happens all the time already, particularly with states passing new laws to make life very unpleasant for those that try to stay and work here.
Ricci says her group was thrilled with Romney’s use of the “self-deportation” theme and has been trying to get in touch with his campaign. Unfortunately, the Romney campaign hasn’t been returning those patriotic calls.
According to some of the posts on Patriots for Self-Deportation’s website (SelfDeport.org), a great many of the U.S. citizens that are self-deporting themselves seem to be of European ancestry. People whose grandparents came from Ireland and Italy illegally and failed to become naturalized citizens apparently tend to produce offspring who feel very guilty about being “anchor babies.”
“Part of it is that self-deporting to Europe is easier than self-deporting to South America… or to Africa,” explains Ricci, simply because “it’s easier to get back from Europe.”
Makes complete sense.
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