Should we amend the I&NA that gives citizenship at birth to children born in the US of parents who are not citizens or permanent resident aliens? Pregnant women that illegally come across the border - north and south - and have their babies on US soil are currently granted US citizenship for their child. The woman has broken the law but derives a gain from that illegal act ie., her child is now a citizen and she as the mother is granted free pre-natal care and free birthing of that child. Is that fair?
No one is supposed to make any gain from an illegal act in this country, but this seems to be the exception.
There is a bill before the House, H.R.73, to amend that loophole, I don’t know if there is a companion bill for the Senate. Should we close that loophole?
You can destroy your now by worrying about tomorrow. Janis Joplin
The proposed bill, H.R. 73, would amend 8 U.S.C. § 1101 (the Immigration and Nationality Act) to deny citizenship to a child born in the United States unless: (1) the child is born in wedlock, and either parent is either a US citizen or permanant resident alien; or (2) the child us born out of wedlock and the mother is a US citizen or permanant resident alien.
“In wedlock” specifically exempts “common-law” marriages from its definition.
The bill was refrred to the Judiciary Committee, which in turn referred it to the subcommittee on Immigration and Claims.
I’m not so sure it’s a bad idea. I’d like to hear other folks’ reactions, but at first blush, I would support such an idea.
John, this is not a flame on you (since you posted the OP, and evidently not trollaciously), but I’ve always thought the best answer to troll-type questions regarding immigrants ought to be, “Yes, retroactive to just before you or your ancestors got here. If you don’t care for that answer, no.”
It is designed to remove any gain as incentive to break the immigration law. The bill was authored and introduced to the House by Rep Brain Bilbray of California.
We should not reward people breaking the law that jump in front of those that have been waiting years for a legal visa.
You can destroy your now by worrying about tomorrow. Janis Joplin
First, a minor hijack: you wouldn’t have to just amend the INA, you’d have to amend the Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment provides that
Some anti-immigration folks have jumped on the “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” bit and have argued that it doesn’t apply to children of illegal aliens, just as it doesn’t apply to children of foreign diplomats. I’m not sure how you could effect that policy without also giving illegal aliens a form of diplomatic immunity, which I really don’t think the anti-immigrants want to do. In any event the Supreme Court has already, explicitly rejected the notion that illegal immigrants are not subject to the jurisdiction of the states:
------ Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982)
So it seems sorta unlikely they would uphold an interpretation that excludes aliens from the jurisdiction of the federal government.
John John will probably drop dead to hear me say this but I wouldn’t really have a problem amending the law if it was just an INA rule. I don’t, however, like the idea of using the Constitution to restrict people’s rights, and I don’t believe there is a pressing enough need to make an exception here.
Also, JJ:
Technically, of course, the people having children here aren’t “jumping in front” of anyone - their children (who did not themselves break the law) become US citizens, but the parents are still subject to deportation. Only after citizen children turn 21 can they sponsor their parents for visas.
And one last thing, the solution to the problem of people waiting years for a legal visa is to speed up the process. Why is the process so slow? Because of insufficient INS resources. Why are the resources insufficient? In part, at least, because of the anti-immigration sentiment of many people in this country, John John included.
Actually, the bill purports to handle this. I should have quoted more fully from the proposed text; I gave the final result and not how it got there.
Now, does Congress have the authority to determine who is “subject to the jurisdiction of the United States?”
Phyler v. Doe seems to answer that question in the negative, even though it might be possible to distinguish the cases.
Phyler dealt with a Texas statute that withheld from local school districts all state funds for children who were not “legally admitted” into the United States, and authorized local school districts to deny enrollment to such children.
It was held to violate the Equal Protection Clause, which provides that no state shall “…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
The Supremes reasoned that since these children were persons subject to the laws o Texas, the Clause obviously applied.
Note that the Texas law did not try to define children who were not legally admitted into the United States as “not under the jurisdiction of the laws of Texas.”
H.R. 73, however, seeks to dodge that bullet by explicitly defining ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States, and excluding from it chldren born to illegal aliens, as defined above.
As long as the children are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, they do not fall within the ambit of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Now – will this create problems later on? Has a child born to illegal immigrants under this law just been given a free pass from ever being tried for a federal crime?
I don’t know.
But it’s evident this is a trickier problem than it first appeared.
Well, you can insert the words you THINK belong in that clause, and interpret it that way if you want to. The Supreme Court apparently disagrees with you. Tough luck.
Ha. The firm I used to work for had a few clients who might want to hear this. Pity I can’t reach them to tell them, though … they were deported.
I’m willing to consider that they may be deported at a lower rate than illegals without US citizen children (AFAIK the INS doesn’t publish statistics on this), but if so it’s a problem with enforcement of the existing laws, not with a need for new laws.
I don’t think “lawfully born” is a subject of intrepretation but one obviously implied in a lawful document.
The US does NOT deport the mothers who illegally had their child on US soil. If they did there would not be a need for H.R. 73. The mother is admitted to the hospital free of charge, given free medicine and the child is given a US Social Security card, which entitles it to ALL the lawful benefits of leagally citizenship, even though the mother broke the law to obtain that citizenship. It is further complcated by the US,s inability to deport the mother of a new born American citizen, which would cause undue harm to the child. Do you get the picture now?
I suggest to go to this site www.Fairus.org for a more informed explaination on this subject.
You can destroy your now by worrying about tomorrow. Janis Joplin
The argument that the 14th Amendment requires that we grant citizenship to these children is debatable and illogical. We don’t confer citizenship on the children of foreign representatives here, because they – like the illegal aliens – are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, but owe their allegiance to a foreign country. The status of illegal aliens is similar in that they too have rejected the application of U.S. law by either sneaking into the country or by failing to depart when required to do so.
The children born here to illegal aliens acquire the citizenship of their parents, and if the parent is deported, there should be no question about the children being deportable with their parents. By adopting this standard, we would be conforming our practice to that of many of our allies and neighboring countries.
I was born in Washington, DC, and thus acquired US citizenship, even though my father was the Economic Attaché for the Salvadoran Embassy - a diplomat, with full diplomatic immunity.
(As it happens, my father decided to stay here rather than return to El Salavador after a change in government caused him to lose his embassy job. He became a naturalized US citizen thereafter).
Presumably, I could have claimed Salvadoran citizenship as well, and been one of those “dual citizenship” folks barely tolerated by the US government, but there never seemed to be a need to.
A person may not “reject” application of US law, John John. (Well, I suppose he may, but is an act without real meaning.) If they commit a federal crime, they may be arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to serve time in a federal prison – all the while, I suppose, protsting that they have rejected US law.
With all due respect to our allies and neighboring countries, there are any practices extant therein which are not suitable for us to adopt. I am unpersuaded by the argument that other countries should do it, so we should to.
It seems to me there are two questions here: first, should we change our current law to henceforth deny citizenship to children born to illegal immigrants? If we should, then what is the mechanism (Act of Congress or Constitutional Amendment) necessary to effect this change?
As to the first, I still haven’t heard anything to convince me we shouldn’t make this change… so while I am not carving my position into granite just yet, I still lean towards the enactment of this policy.
Now, as to the second – I made a fair try at distinguishing the Plyler case above (which for some inexplicable reason I mistyped as “Phyler”) in an effort to show that an Act of Congress is all that’s needed. I invite further commentary on this issue…
I am similarly unpersuaded by that argument. That should never be a presmise for changing ANY of our laws.
Do we need to change the law, or just have a reasonable interpretation of the obvious - no gain from illegal activity and respect for soverign law.
Act of Congress, which is binding if ratified, which would call for an interpretation of an existing law rather than make new law. Isn’t that correct?
Regardless of the lawful method, reasonable interpretation or amendment, we should close the loophole. There is a reasonable, and legal, method of becoming a citizen and those that chose to break the law to obtain it should NOT take precedence over those that are waiting for lawful entry.
You can destroy your now by worrying about tomorrow. Janis Joplin
Obviously it is a subject of interpretation, and yours doesn’t match the Court’s.
The mother is not admitted to the hospital by the Border Patrol. Hospital employees are not paid to be spies. The child’s citizenship is not, by law, considered to be sufficient “undue harm” to prevent a parent’s deportation.
I’ve read their site. It’s full of generalizations and claims unsupported by evidence. Like I said earlier, I don’t get my information off the web. I work in immigration law and I have seen people get deported despite having US citizen children. So please don’t tell me that a website of anti-immigration propaganda is a “more informed explanation” than my own professional experience.
We need to change the law. Your “obvious” interpretation has never been the one used. If we wish to change the practice, we need to change the law. Hence the need for H.R. 73.
No. Congress makes new law. It is the job of the courts to interpret the law.
“Binding if ratified,” is a confusing term. An act of Congress becomes law under the prescribed Constitutional procedure, viz., the President signing it; the President vetoing it and Congress overriding the veto by two-thirds majority; or the President taking no action for ten days while Congress remains in session. That is the only method by which a bill becomes a law. (Didn’t you ever watch “Schoolhouse Rock?”)
One of the guys at my church works for the INS, and this morning I asked him about deporting illegal aliens who give birth in the US. He confirmed that it is routinely done. So contrary to the web site and your claims, I am convinced that giving birth in the US, in and of itself, is insufficient to remain. But it does create a little US citizen, entitled to come back when he’s eighteen and sponsor family when he’s twenty-one.
Fair enough. As I said, I’m leaning but not rock-solid convinced, and I wish someone could develop this argument a little bit more.
What loophole? There are currently three ways to become a US Citizen: (1) Being born on US soil, (2) Being born overseas to US citizen parent or parents who, provided they meet the requirements of the law, pass citizenship onto the baby, & (3) Being naturalized pursuant to law.
The child born on US soil to the illegal alien (er, “undocumented alien”) parent met the condition mentioned in the Constitution, the parent met none of the 3 requirements and thus may be deported. The child can not be deported; however, the child may accompany the parent provided the parent’s country does not prohibit such entry.
If you really want an interesting story, ask me about one case when someone falsely stated he was the father of his wife’s child, said child born in Japan, trying to get US citizenship for the tyke.
quote]If you really want an interesting story, ask me about one case when someone falsely stated he was the father of his wife’s child, said child born in Japan, trying to get US citizenship for the tyke.
[/quote]
Well, do you think that a pro-immigration law firm that makes money from finding loopholes in US immigration laws, circumventing existing laws and spreading immigration propaganda is any less committed their goals? Of course not.
You fail to mention that the mother is given free delivery of her baby, medical help, medicne and not turned away, as she might be in other countries. Some LEGAL CITIZENS ARE TURNED AWAY THAT DON’T HAVE THE MONEY. THAT’S FAIR?
Answer this, rudah, do you think it is fair for us to pay for her medical costs when we have citizens who cannot get the proper medical help?** Do you think we should present her medical bill to her country for payment? I do.**
You can destroy your now by worrying about tomorrow. Janis Joplin
