Posted on 05/19/2007 2:12:52 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
CANCITA, Mexico - Since they joined their deported parents in Mexico, 7-year-old Adriana has stopped screaming "Papa!" in her sleep and 10-year-old Yadira's asthma has eased. Pedro, 15, doesn't break into tears anymore, and Adrian, 12, thinks of his new life as an adventure.
For now, these American children are trying to ignore the wrenching decision they have to make by the end of summer: Stay with their parents in this bone-dry village where they bathe in a canal and use an outhouse, or return alone to some of America's best schools in Palo Alto, Calif.
Tens of thousands of families are facing similar choices, and even more soon could if Congress goes ahead with an overhaul of U.S. immigration laws.
About 3 million U.S.-born children have a parent who is living illegally in America, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, and since 2004 the government has been deporting illegal immigrants at a record rate.
The Senate is expected to begin debate Monday on a sweeping bill that would provide a pathway to citizenship for 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. The bill would limit the importance of family ties, capping visas for parents of U.S. citizens at 40,000 a year and changing a preference system that for four decades has favored such ties.
Pedro Ramirez Sr., 38, was banking on that system to give him and his wife a path to citizenship once their eldest son turns 18 in two years. Now he's not so sure: The new proposal would place more emphasis on potential immigrants' skills and education, and his deportation may rule him out anyway.
Ramirez never went to school. He sneaked across the border as a 16-year-old boy, learning English as he worked his way up from a minimum-wage factory job to night supervisor at an Albertson's supermarket.
His promotion — and the jump in salary from $6 to $16 an hour — allowed him to move his family from the rough streets of East Palo Alto to quiet, suburban Palo Alto, home to Stanford University.
He and his wife also applied for residency, but were denied after their lawyer was disbarred. Immigration officials say they evaded notices to appear in court.
Back in Mexico, the family has spent their savings of nearly $10,000 unsuccessfully fighting for residency. Friends, parents and teachers from Pedro Jr.'s Gunn High School — No. 79 in the country last year, according to a Newsweek ranking — have raised $2,000 for the family.
Before his father was deported in February, Pedro's biggest problems were how to get into UCLA law school and persuading his football coach to let him be quarterback. Now, he says he might have to get used to the family's two-room shack and bathing in a canal to keep the family together.
"If I go, I want to go with everybody," he said.
His mother, Isabel, said she'll let her children decide what they want to do. If they return to California, the boys would live with an aunt in Newark, Calif., and the girls with their fifth-grade teacher in Palo Alto.
She said the past few months have been traumatic enough.
After Ramirez was deported in February, Pedro Jr. broke into tears in his math class and couldn't concentrate. He was appalled by his mother's monitoring ankle bracelet, saying: "You're not a criminal!"
"I feel betrayed," by the U.S. government, Pedro Jr. said.
Isabel, 36, tries to make life in Mexico as normal as possible for the children. She bought a cushioned toilet seat for the outhouse, but it slides off the wooden bench. She incessantly sweeps the dirt floor of the shack where she cooks and splashes bleach on the ground to keep away the flies.
But it's a losing battle. Cancita has no running water and no telephone service. It's also in the middle of one of Mexico's most violent regions — the western state of Michoacan.
Earlier this month, a half-dozen military helicopters swooped into Cancita after gunmen in a nearby town killed five soldiers in a midday shootout. The troops frisked Pedro Jr. and his father as they went house-to-house looking for drugs and weapons.
"I was a little nervous," Pedro Jr. admitted sheepishly.
But his main fear is for what will happen to his parents. If they stay in Cancita, there is no work. If they try to return to the U.S., they'll have to go illegally through the dangerous desert.
If the children stay in Cancita, they'll have to learn to read and write in Spanish. Adrian, a seventh grader, is struggling with "Los Tres Cerditos" — "The Three Little Pigs."
Pedro Jr. spends his days burning rap songs on his dust-covered computer and transferring them to his MP3 player, which the neighbors think is a cell phone.
Yadira said when she explained the device could play songs from the Internet, they asked: "What's the Internet?"
"I don't want to go to school here. It's no good. There's nowhere to play," she said. But she added: "I don't want to go back and leave my parents."
If you are present in the U.S. without authorization, you are breaking the law.
If they try to return to the U.S., they'll have to go illegally through the dangerous desert.
Nobody is forcing you to travel to the United States.
If you want to come, we will welcome you IF you follow the law. Crossing the border via the desert is not only illegal but highly dangerous to your health and safety, and first impressions are very hard to overcome.
lofl
The author isn't crystal clear, but I belive the kids in this story were born in America. They're U.S. citizens, though their parents are not.
I think the kids mentioned in this story were born in the U.S., making them U.S. citizens, even though their parents are not.
The more I learn about the rest of the world, the more I'm thankful to live in the U.S.
It acutally depends upon one’s reading of the 14th ammendment. Of course, I think the Supremes believed it confirs citizenship on the children of illegal aliens.
susie
I have read the Fourteenth Amendment. My government teacher in high school was especially adamant about all of us students reading and understanding the Constitution and its Amendments.
What about those born to citizens of a foreign power...who have legally immigrated to the United States, on a permanent basis?
Your statement is overly broad. I sincerely hope that its intended meaning was that children born to persons present in the United States either on a temporary or illegal basis, or otherwise subject to the jurisdiction of another power, i.e., diplomats, should not be granted automatic U.S. citizenship.
The question is: are illegally present persons subject to the jurisdiction of the government of the United States or the governments of their countries of origin? Diplomats are not, and thus their children are not automatically granted U.S. citizenship.
Correct me I'm wrong in any part of this.
I don’t get the problem.
“I feel betrayed,” by the U.S. government, Pedro Jr. said.”
Well, we have something in common, I too feel betrayed by the US government.....a government that will not protect its own borders, its heritage or its future.
Get the hell out and stay out.
Now the worm has turned. In 1975, a trickle of legal immigration: bad; in 2007 a tidal wave of illegal immigration: good.
There is no choice, the children should stay in Mexico with their parents!
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside...”
14th Amendment
Note the “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” clause. Some have interpreted the intent of that to mean if you are ILLEGAL, you are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the US or any state. Maybe it is time for that to go before the SCOTUS.
Illegal immigrants are not foreign diplomats, and we exercise jurisdiction over Palo Alto. The children of illegal immigrants derive their citizenship from the Fourteenth Amendment. If a diplomat commits a crime, then our courts cannot punish that diplomat because we lack jurisdiction over diplomats under international law. The Fourteenth Amendment language regarding birthright citizenship itself derives from English common law that makes all persons born in Britain subjects of the King. It exempts only three classes of persons—foreign diplomats with their obvious loyalty to the potentate that sent them; persons born to enemy foreign invaders; and American Indians not taxed and not subject to our jurisdiction because we then negotiated treaties with their tribes and nations.
Although the situation in certain cities and border towns might suggest severely otherwise, the United States presently exercises jurisdiction over its entire territory and has done so continuously since World War II. The illegal immigrants who constantly overwhelm our Southwestern border establish themselves in our country because we traditionally voluntarily choose not to exercise our jurisdiction over them with respect to immigration law, not because some treaty or other provision of international law prevents us from doing so. Mexico does not sponsor, arm, and equip the border-jumpers although its government condones and encourages intense emigration. The hordes streaming across the southwestern border therefore do not constitute an invading army within the strictures of international law.
The children therefore are Americans, and the article makes clear that none desires to remain in Mexico. They ironically even might not possess Mexican citizenship. Notwithstanding their obvious preference to return to America, I hereby suggest that they migrate within Mexico in search of some opportunity. Mexico actually does have some prosperous regions that embraced conservative economics and consequently recovered more fully from decades of communistic deprivations.
This is the only rational explanation that I can think of for the President's actions. By allowing this safety valve we potentially keep mexico out of the hands of chavez/castro wannabes.
On the other hand we keep a narco/kleptocracy afloat that is a direct threat to our country and abet one of the largest illegal migrations in history. We condemn those left in mexico to a serf like existence ruled over by criminals. We bankrupt SS, Medicare and Medicaid.
We rob the American taxpayer of trillions of dollars and virtually surrender the American values that have made this country great.
That is exactly how I see it. To me, of all the issues out there, this is the easiest one to understand. Stopping the flow of illegal aliens (not all Mexican) is good for the U.S., good for Mexico (in the long run) and just plain right. A limited guest worker program, legal migration, and investment in the resources of Mexico and it’s infrastructure would serve to alleviate most of the problem I believe. Provding of course the corruption in power is lessened. The chaos that exists now is not right and giving into to it with amnesty will only exasperate the problem. I don’t believe for a second that our government hs the heart to secure the border, or that any illegals will go back to their country or will pay a $5,000 fine. That will all be swept away and the problem will persist.
Idiots they could have lived like kings in Mexico on that.
Choice 1) Make your own country less corrupt.
Choice 2) Deal with it.
The Supreme Court already decided much the same issues in US v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), and the exclusion of the children of illegal aliens from citizenship violates the Fourteenth Amendment and contravenes the English common law that influenced its language.
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