Miami-based Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, left, asks Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump a question about his immigration proposal during a news conference in Dubuque, Iowa, on Aug. 25, 2015.(Photo: Charlie Neibergall, AP)

MIAMI — For the past few weeks, we've watched Republican presidential candidates argue about the 147-year-old practice of granting U.S. citizenship to people born in this country.

GOP front-runner Donald Trump, who has made opposition to undocumented immigration a hallmark of his campaign, got the birthright citizenship debate started when he called for its elimination, splitting the GOP field in half.

Some support Trump, arguing that immigrants are taking advantage of the custom by giving birth to “anchor babies” — children who could eventually help their parents get citizenship. Others argue that it's a time-honored American practice that should endure.

Watching the back and forth, I'm left thinking that it's all a colossal waste of time.

Understand, I'm not choosing sides here. There is unquestionably an entire industry in China designed to help pregnant women get visas to come to the U.S. to give birth. On the other hand, data from the Pew Research Center show that the vast majority of undocumented immigrants who give birth in the U.S. — more than 90% — arrived in the country more than two years before giving birth.

The reason this has been such a useless exercise is that no matter what Trump or others say, changing birthright citizenship anytime soon is nearly impossible. Let's look at the options.

First, some opponents of the practice have called for a change to the Constitution.

Birthright citizenship was established by the 14th Amendment, which was passed in 1868 to ensure that recently freed slaves would become full citizens. Simply proposing a new amendment requires two-thirds majorities in both chambers of Congress or approval from a convention called by two-thirds of the state legislatures. Ratification would then require approval from three-quarters of the nation's statehouses.

That incredibly high threshold helps explain why only one amendment to the Constitution has been ratified in my lifetime, and that one — the 27th, which forbids members of Congress from immediately increasing their salaries — took 202 years to gain approval. Throw in the very polarized state of Congress, and we can assume this isn't going to happen.

There's also the possibility of challenging the interpretation of the amendment in court. That's one option Trump and others have laid out, arguing that we are simply misinterpreting the wording of the amendment.

They point to a clause in the amendment that states people must be born in the U.S. and be "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" to receive citizenship. They say undocumented immigrants don't fall within the jurisdiction of the U.S. government, so their children shouldn't benefit from it. The problem is that longtime opponents of illegal immigration have been trying for quite a while to figure out a way to challenge the interpretation in court — with no success. Because nobody can show that they've been directly harmed by the child of undocumented immigrants becoming U.S. citizens, opponents of the practice have not been able to establish legal standing in any U.S. court.

"If there had been a way to challenge the practice (in court), we would've thought of it a few decades ago," says Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that advocates lower levels of immigration and opposes birthright citizenship.

Finally, there's the possibility of passing a new law to bar birthright citizenship. Such a bill could pass the GOP-controlled House, but with Republicans six votes shy of a filibuster-proof, 60-vote majority in the Senate, passage is unlikely.

That means Republicans would need to get that bill through the House, pick up six more Senate seats in 2016 and win back the White House with one of the candidates who supports ending birthright citizenship to avoid a veto. Even if all that happened, the law would immediately encounter a barrage of lawsuits and head straight into a lengthy legal battle that would likely end up before the Supreme Court.

That's it. There are no other options. Trump and others who oppose birthright citizenship couldn't blow it away simply by issuing a decree. So why are we still talking about this instead of trying to figure out how a president and Congress could actually change our immigration laws to improve what's widely regarded as a broken system?

There are serious discussions to be had about the state of our border: Do we need more more fencing, manpower and technology, or an entirely new strategy? There are plenty of people who fault the current approach, from employers who say they need to import more workers to Americans who claim they're unfairly being pushed out of jobs by cheaper foreign labor. There are valid questions about sanctuary cities, the treatment of immigrants in federal detention centers and our country's ability to track who's coming and going through our ports of entry.

Yet here we are, debating something that gets people riled up, something that generates plenty of heat and headlines, but has nearly zero chance of coming to pass. I guess it truly is election season.

Gomez is a Miami-based reporter for USA TODAY who covers immigration.

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