[stonemetal]

Age has no bearing on the legality of the action in question. So yes you are a criminal weather you are 6 months or 60 years old. I am pretty sure they treat you differently based on age though. I can't see them deporting a 6 month old without a care taker like they would an adult. I wouldn't be surprised if it were possible to set up a mail relay to "leave" the country while you work on your citizenship papers. Nor would I be surprised to find out that it were quicker to get a Canadian citizenship and use that to apply for a US citizenship.

[leecho0]

It does. If you are born in the US, you're automatically naturalized, even if your parents are illegal citizens. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_nationality_law#B...

6 months difference between legal and illegal seems a bit arbitrary.

[jacquesm]

> So yes you are a criminal weather you are 6 months or 60 years old.

We seem to have a different opinion on that.

Personally I think that any system - and any person - that can treat 6 months olds as criminals is seriously broken, and to be held in contempt.

[stonemetal]

It isn't like the punishment is something horrible. We don't put illegal emigrants in Leavenworth. We give them a free plane ride home. Where they are fully able to try to come into the country again legally or illegally.

Believe what you like. Personally I am happy with the fact that murder is illegal for everyone not just people over the age of 35. Personally I am happy that theft is illegal to everyone not just people over the age of 40. Personally I like the fact that courts are allowed to deal with assaults committed by minors and even have special rules regarding their care. I believe you have to have rules that apply to everybody, you can't decide that this isn't a crime today but wake up tomorrow and you get death row for it.

[jacquesm]

> We give them a free plane ride home.

For someone that was brought in to the US and is now at an age to have completed their secondary education home is the United States. No amount of paper waving and applying of the rules is going to change that.

Anyway, I'm wasting my time with this, I only wish that in your life you will never ever come up against a situation where you will be forced to realize just how cruel your stance is.

We're not debating murder here, that's just a straw man. We are not dealing with assault, committed by minors or otherwise.

The subject was immigration, specifically by minors too young to even realize what that means.

[stonemetal]

  you will be forced to realize just how cruel your stance is.

What is cruel about expecting people to live by the rules they have agreed to live by? Yes and he is a grown up now and has known for years that he is in the wrong. Instead of doing the right thing he complains about how we should all just love him for it. It would be a big relief for him if he went home no more fear of being discovered, no more I can't do that because I might be found out, the ability to get an id, bank account, health insurance, take the GRE. If he wanted to go to grad school he could be back in a semester on a student visa.(according to travel.state.gov a student visa takes at most 120 days and $300)

  The subject was immigration, specifically by 
  minors too young to even realize what that means.

No I was talking about the fact that the rules apply to everyone, and the fact that is not a bad thing like you seem to think it is.

[Gormo]

Stonemetal, what would you do if you discovered that you were actually born in, say, Ethiopia, and were brought to the US illegally as an infant?

Would you simply leave for a foreign country you have no knowledge of, abandoning your life, severing your relationships, giving up all of the property that you earned through your own endeavors, just because the law is the law?

Any rule that would compel you to do so is simply, unequivocally _wrong_, and deserves to be violated.