The anti-immigrant hysteria about 'anchor babies' is a complete fallacy.

Right wing shows are full of talk about Mexicans coming here to have children so that their parents can become legal.

It is complete nonsense and Rush Limbaugh and others know it.

A child cannot claim a parent until the child is 21 years under U.S. immigration law.

But the naysayers would have you believe it is an immediate process.

It is not , nothing close to it.

But the hardliners prefer to let the poisonous rhetoric flow rather than face the facts.

Amazingly, Senator Lindsay Graham has now joined the 'anchor babies' crusade.

He has called for every person born to an undocumented person to be considered illegal too.

In fairness, that is what the Irish government currently considers the law.

There is one significant difference however. In Ireland such babies once automatically transferred citizenship to their parents.

That is not what the law is in America.

Chasing down new born children and deporting them on the spot smacks of Nazism not the great American democracy.

I have often pointed out that were today's restrictions in place the ancestors of Ronald Reagan or John F.Kennedy would never have made it to America.

We need a reasoned debate on immigration not just ignorant armies clashing by night.

God knows we could do with it.