Anti-Immigrant Vogue: "Anchor Baby" Nonsense

With the debate about immigration law heating up, the offensive term "anchor baby" has been thrown around a lot of late.

Just in case you were wondering, the term has been around at least since 2005, perhaps coined by Lou Dobbs:

Dobbs has used the term “anchor babies” to refer to the
U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants, suggesting
inaccurately that having a U.S. citizen child is a means
of acquiring legal immigration status or being protected
from deportation. (Lou Dobbs Tonight transcript, 3/31/05).

That's from page 16 of this document: http://www.civilrights.org/publications/hatecrimes/lccref_hate_crimes_report.pdf

Jezebel magazine rightly denounces the term (and it's companion term "anchor embryo") and this article goes into more detail about the harmful effect of the term.

This kind of talk has been leading to a real rise in violence in many parts of the country and represents a real threat to the physical and psychological well-being of the families I work with, so I hope it stops soon.

But the fire of stupidity is easy to kindle and hard to stomp out.

Do some stomping, willya? Thanks.