Posted on 05/22/2006 12:49:34 PM PDT by SmithL
NORCROSS, Ga. - Laila Montezuma was 16 when she sneaked across the Rio Grande from Mexico with her mother, only to be abandoned by the smuggler paid to get them into the United States. They had to hire another "coyote" to reach Houston.
But Montezuma's own daughter will be spared those struggles. Even if Montezuma and her husband are both deported for being illegal immigrants, little Alma could eventually return to enjoy the opportunities her parents sought here.
"She's not going to have to fight for anything for the simple fact that she was born here," Montezuma said as her infant daughter played in a waiting room at a pediatrics clinic in suburban Atlanta.
About 2 million families face the risk of being split up because the children are U.S.-born citizens but the parents are illegal immigrants. At least one lawmaker has proposed ending citizenship by birthright, restricting automatic citizenship at birth to children of U.S. citizens and legal residents.
The United States has one of the most liberal citizenship policies in the world, granting citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil based on an 1868 constitutional amendment. About 3.1 million children are U.S. citizens by birth, even though one or both of their parents are here illegally, according to estimates by the Pew Hispanic Center.
Supporters of that measure say it is the only way to fully integrate immigrants.
"A person has a stake in the society where they are, and you can't beat that as an integration measure," said Demetrios Papademetriou, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think tank.
But critics who want to eliminate the right insist it is a magnet for illegal immigration and an obstacle in efforts to deport millions of illegal immigrants.
"It's not as large a magnet as jobs, but it will be easier to solve the problem of illegal immigration if we avoid the mixed-family situation," said Rep. Nathan Deal, R-Ga., who tried unsuccessfully to revoke the citizenship-by-birth right in the immigration bill passed by the House in December.
Deal and other advocates of stricter controls say immigrants come to the U.S. in part to have "anchor babies" - children who can offer their parents some immunity from deportation and then petition for them to receive green cards after turning 21. But just how many immigrants do so is unclear.
Border Patrol agents rescue one or two immigrants in labor every year.
Daniel McClafferty, part of a Border Patrol medical team, found an 18-year-old woman in shock with her newborn daughter last month about 20 miles north of the border in the desolate foothills of the Arizona desert.
A fellow immigrant had helped deliver the baby, cutting her umbilical cord with a nail clipper. McClafferty helped evacuate the mother on a helicopter and carry the baby to the closest road, four miles away.
Alejandro Ramos with the Mexican consulate in Tucson, Ariz., said the mother had asked for a U.S. birth certificate for her daughter, but her whereabouts were unknown.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers try not to separate families but they do "arrest and remove people every day who have dependents in the U.S.," said agency spokesman Marc Raimondi.
Immigrants who are ordered deported can ask a judge to let them stay if, among other things, they are able to prove their deportation would be an "extremely unusual hardship" to a U.S.-citizen spouse or child.
Immigration judges typically consider whether children can speak the language of their parents' native country, whether they have enough money to survive and whether they have serious health problems, said Elaine Komis of the Executive Office of Immigration Review, which runs federal immigration courts.
Even though Luz Maria Medrano of Las Vegas was ordered deported along with her second husband, the couple won permanent residency after a six-year legal battle when a judge found her 7-year-old, U.S.-born son would not receive proper treatment for his learning disability in Mexico.
She's especially happy for her other 17-year-old son, who was born in Mexico. She carried him across the Arizona desert when he was 12 months old to flee an abusive ex-husband.
"I felt very responsible," said Medrano, a 40-year-old real estate agent. "It was for him that I would have suffered more if they had sent us to Mexico. Now the future for him will be grandiose. Here, whatever you do, you'll be successful at."
Back at the suburban Atlanta clinic serving Spanish-speaking families, Irma Baldonado recalled being two months pregnant when she immigrated illegally to California. She left her first-born daughter in El Salvador with her mother and has not seen the child in seven years. She hopes her two children who were born here will one day get papers for their 10-year-old sister to join them.
"It's what I wish for the most," Baldonado said. "Then it will all have been worth it."
ON THE NET
Familia Latina Unida: http://www.somosunpueblo.com/cflu_families.htm
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement: http://www.ice.gov/
No compromise? I am talking about the issue of millions of American children. What about their welfare. They are not mexicans. We just cant have American kids that one day are living like you and me and send them to begging on the streets in Mexico for survival. I cant even imagine this is on the table. PLus what would we get when they and the kids that they have which would be Americans come back. Its not only unjust and immoral but it doesnt make sense. A common sense exception to this would be good. This situation and the breaking of familes would cause too many problems down the road. IF there was exception to folks with American kids or spouses uner this proposal I could support it if had too
"Alberto Gonzalez, the Attorney General of the USA, had illegal grandparents. Should his citizenship be revoked?"
Can't think of a better way of getting rid of the illegal lover.
You say:
"So it is a terrible injustice that Pedro and Mark, born in adjacent hospital beds, are both US citizens? Get real."
Yes, the abuse of this birthright privilege does indeed lead to unjust outcomes. ... consider ...
http://www.mnforsustain.org/immg_case_against_birthright_citizenship_hamdi.htm
"In 1993, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors reported that two-thirds of births in L.A. County hospitals were to illegal aliens, mostly Mexicans. Conservative estimates of illegal-alien births here, assuming an illegal alien population of between 8.7 and 11 million, run from 287,000 to 363,000 per year.
Not only Latin Americans have figured out Uncle Sam’s birthright bonanza. South Koreans have created a birth tourism industry. As the Los Angeles Times reported in 2002, Korean tour operators fly Korean mothers into Los Angeles and other American cities, there to give birth —in Korean-owned clinics with Korean staff— to an "American."
Websites like www.birthinusa.com advertise "from birth to citizenship." Korean chaperones help get the babies California birth certificates and U.S. passports to take home. Junior can then dodge Korea’s draft —and sponsor his family in America if they feel like moving. Pledging allegiance to the Stars and Stripes has nothing to do with it."
You say:
"The baby has broken no rule. You wish to visit the sins of the parents onto the child."
In what respect it is any 'punishment' that
The child is a citizen of the country of the parent? None at all.
Rather than punishment, that is simply the common-sense rule of most any country on earth.
A Korean comes here on a 2-week tourist visa, has a child,
and returns to live in Korea. How is it visiting 'sins' to consider that child to be a citizen of Korea, the country of their parents?
"Now you're talking about the parent benefitting from the child. They only can do so (sometimes) because the law lets them -- why aren't you pushing instead for a law preventing illegal immigrants from benefitting from their citizen child(ren)?"
What a nutty question!
Unless we abolish the welfare state, we will have programs to help children in the homes of indigents. As long as we have insecure borders and a birthright citizenship, a woman can come into America, have an American baby, and raise them on the dime of Uncle Sam. That benefit *alone* of getting a child raised on the level of American welfare instead of the level of 3rd world poverty, is a huge benefit. (Similarly,
Most mexican workers coming to the US get about a 6 to 8 times increase in their wages. )
How can they NOT benefit? Only if we cut off all welfare and ended all forms of family-based immigration.
Compared to those extremist solutions, ending birthright citizenship is a far more measured and reasonable approach.
Mama's baby, Papa's maybe...
The childrens parents BROKE the law, and this is rewarding law breakers. You want a fully socialistic America, then go ahead with your nonsense, the last round of amnesty turned California into a liberal state. Also, while there is very limited upward mobility in Mexico at the current time, people in Mexico are hardly starving, and its standard of living is better off than many Eastren European nations and Russia.
I am for a just solution, and the just solution is for the white elites in Mexico to pay the price for their opression, and give all of Mexico a future, and if that involves harsh economic reforms and land reforms so be it. What you and your ilk are telling working class Americans like me of all races is to carry the burden of Mexicos economic problems, with elites in both the US and Mexico gain a massive economic windfall as a result, makes me angry and ill.
Again, no compromise, and I will vote at the ballot box to punish any politician that makes the compromise, such as Sen Dewine from my state.
Anyways CatholicFreeper, enjoy a solidly blue America, the shortsighted businessmen who pushed the nonsense with the 86 amnesty ensured that California would become a quasi socialistic state, and now they want to do that to the rest of America, so long to the old America, say hello to the Socialistic, multi cultural America. As for the so called socially conservative views of the illegals and recent immigrants to Mexico, look at the voting record if the Hispanic caucus in the California state legislature, on social issues they are identical to white liberal Democrats, and go to the barrios where flesh is cheap and drugs ate plentiful.
The brutal truth is now is not a time for any ideals, now is a time for quick action to recify the festering wound uncontrolled immigration has become.
"Its great that so called "conservatives" such as you want to reward crimes." ...
"Being born is a crime?"
The 'crime' cited was illegal entry of the parent. The 'reward' to the parent is citizenship of the child. This is a reward for the parent because they are doing this in their own family's interest. Just as you or I would want the best school for our child, some in the world want the best *country* for their child. I don't fault them, but this whole debate about immigration is whether we pick who comes here based on *our* decision, or based on the decision of those foreigners who disregard our laws.
"Because the child is a citizen doesn't mean his parents should get to stay in the US."
All the more reason to consider this child not a US citizen. If the parents are not subject to our jurisdiction, then the child should not be as well. The child's citizenship matches the country of allegiance of the parent, unless the parents are changing that allegiance by legally moving to another country permanently.
" There's no reason they have to be given special privileges because of their child's citizenship."
It's almost impossible to have that and still have workable immigration.
One thing we would have to change to make that true is the concept of family immigration. Right now, a citizen can sponsor for their parents, and parents for children... this is how 'chain migration' works. An 'anchor baby' citizen gets a parent, who gets a grandparent, who then can get the whole clan. It takes times, but over a decade or two, you can have whole extended families of dozens of people come from one baby.
Want to end that? Dont have family sponsorship, or limit it. Ah, but then you get tearjerker stories of a marine in Iraq whose parents are here in US illegally and cant get in.
Once again, we see that fixes that work around the granting of citizenship to children born of illegal aliens are more difficult than simply correcting the underlying cause.
Good retort. "It's not amnesty" they insist ... Fine, call it SHAMNESTY.
Why aren't our politicos debating this for the immigration legislation? Senate? House? Conference to come?
Best spend our energies securing the borders. Securing the borders should not stop just with the Border Patrol, but also in finding visa violators as well.
Throw in enforcement of labor/employment laws as well.
Especially considering that probably more American men are married to foreign women than vice-versa. Consider servicemen stationed overseas, businessmen, husbands of mail-order brides, etc.
I do agree with you on many aspects of your arguement. But, I do not think that the writers of the 14th Amendment expect that this law would create a gigantic "loophole" that is causing so much problems today.
I agree. If you to deny citizenship to babies born here, don't deport them, and don't give them some means to become naturalized, you're going to end up with a generational foreign caste of people.
Or children adopted by U.S. parents. My college professor had an adopted daughter born in Korea, but brought to the U.S. as a baby. There were issues with her not being eligible for certain programs and college financial aid because she wasn't technically a citizen. Up until that time, my professor and her husband took it as given that their daughter was a U.S. citizen.
There are already exceptions to birthright citizenship for children born to parents posted here on official diplomatic business or those born of invading armies.
Since Vincente Fox has a clear policy of recolonizing the United States, one could make a reasonable argument that Mexican illegals, at least, do not get birthright citizenship because they fall into BOTH categories.
You complete misrepresent what I said in order to come to your conclusion that its stupid.
Not receiving an automatic citizenship because its mother snuck across the border is not "punishment" no matter how you cut it. If an American mother snuck across the Mexican border and her child did not receive Mexican citizenship it would not be "punished" either. If you want to discuss stupid then what IS stupid is the claim that refusal to continue this fraud is punishment.
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