In his July 15 column "Immigration debacle," Tim Rutten uses Americans' natural reluctance to deport illegal immigrant parents of U.S.-born children as a weapon to attack efforts at immigration enforcement. Nothing new there. In his dissent to the majority ruling in United States vs. Wong Kim Ark -- the 1898 Supreme Court decision affirming that birth in the United States automatically confers citizenship -- Chief Justice Melville Fuller foresaw how this "birthright" would hinder enforcement of immigration law: