Thread: Mexico warns Texas not to refuse its immigrants' babies U.S. birth certificates

Birth certificates and death certificates are issued by the County Department of Health in most places.

Obtaining Vital Records From County Offices
https://www.cdph.ca.gov/.../birthd...
California Department of Public Health
Jan 8, 2013 - Local Registrar: Birth and death records for current year events and one year prior are available from the county health department in the ...

What is helping make it confusing is that the certificates say Texas on them but it was COUNTY offices that refuse to issue them. The state wasn't really involved in not issuing them, just the 2 county offices.

State Seeks to Dismiss Lawsuit Over Birth Certificates

• by Julián Aguilar
• July 22, 2015
• 82Comments

• Comment

Graphic by Todd Wiseman

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Wednesday asked a federal district judge to dismiss a lawsuit that claims a state agency violated the U.S. Constitution by denying birth certificates to U.S.-citizen children of immigrant parents.

Attorneys with Paxton’s office said that the Texas Department of State Health Services, which is being sued by 17 families living in Cameron, Hidalgo and Starr counties, has sovereign immunity under the 11th Amendment and cannot be sued in federal court because it has not waived that right, according to court documents.

The immunity extends to interim DSHS Commissioner Kirk Cole and State Registrar Geraldine Harris, who are also named as defendants in the suit, Paxton's office argues.

A spokesperson in Paxton’s office would not discuss the filing further, saying the “motion speaks for itself.” A spokesperson for the health agency was not available to comment.

Attorneys with the Texas Civil Rights Project and Texas RioGrande Legal Aid sued the agency in May on behalf of six U.S. citizen children and their parents, who are undocumented immigrants from Mexico, Honduras or Guatemala. In an amended June filing the number of plaintiffs rose to 17 families.

The families claim that the agency is violating the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause by denying birth certificates to children who are, in fact, U.S. citizens.
Local vital statistics offices, which are overseen by DSHS, have refused to accept what the families argue were once acceptable forms of IDs for non-citizens, including passports and Mexican matrícula cards issued by the Mexican consulate offices throughout Texas.

“Such refusal is de facto based on the immigration status of the Plaintiff parents. The lack of a birth certificate, in turn, is causing serious harm to all plaintiffs,” the June filing states.

According to the DSHS website, non-citizens can request birth certificates if they have two secondary forms of identification, including a Mexican voter registration card or a foreign ID card with a photo of the applicant. Foreign passports are also acceptable if they have a valid U.S. visa, which attorney Efrén Olivares said excludes his clients because they are undocumented.

The families also claim the state is improperly enforcing immigration laws, a responsibility belonging to the federal government.

In a statement to the Texas Observer this month, a DSHS official said the agency accepts several forms of ID to verify identity but not the matrículas consulares because the documents used to obtain them are not verified by the “issuing agency.”

The issuing agency is the United Mexican States, attorney Olivares said.

“I would be curious to see if a similar ID issued from Canada” received the same response, he said.

Olivares and lead attorney Jennifer Harbury also argue that if the state changed its policy, it did so without alerting the public or going through an official process.

According to the court filings, plaintiffs Diana Hernandez and Javier Reyes, Mexican citizens who moved to Texas more than a decade ago, received birth certificates for their children in 2009 and 2010 after showing their matrícula cards. They tried again in January after their third child was born and were denied.

Harbury said Wednesday afternoon that her team would file a response after reading the state’s motion. The problem appears more widespread than just the families in the lawsuit, she said.

“What I know is there is a very large number of people who are afraid to come forward,” she said.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/07/...-birth-certif/

http://www.expressnews.com/news/loca...th-6290512.php

News

Undocumented immigrant parents refused birth certificates for citizen children, suit alleges
Immigrants’ kids sue Texas

By Aaron Nelsen
May 27, 2015 Updated: June 1, 2015 2:59pm

WESLACO — Immigrant families seeking birth certificates for their children born in the United States have been spurned in recent months by Texas officials who refuse to recognize as valid Mexico consular-issued identification, according to a civil lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Austin.

Attorneys representing six U.S.-born children and their parents allege the Texas Department of State Health Services denied birth certificates to children on the border whose parents lack citizenship or legal status.

“Clearly, the intent here is to deny birth certificates to citizens who are born to mothers who don’t yet have a valid immigration status,” said Jennifer Harbury, an attorney with Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid. “They are discriminating against the U.S.-born children to punish them for the way the parents entered the country.”

The civil suit, filed by the legal aid group and the Texas Civil Rights Project, contends that an internal policy of the Texas Department of State Health Services has directed its employees along the border to decline as acceptable an identification card, known as the Matricula Consular, issued by Mexico through its consulate offices. The suit asks for a declaratory judgment or an injunction that blocks the state policy.

Attorneys also contend the state is interfering with federal immigration policy.

The state agency Wednesday said its policy to require more than the Matricula Consular to verify identity has been in place since 2008.

“U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and other federal agencies do not recognize (Matricula Consular) as proper identification or consider it to be a reliable form of identification,” said Carrie Williams, spokeswoman for health services agency. “This is largely because the issuing consulate doesn’t verify or authenticate source documents.”

Attorneys for the families say the state never enforced its policy until last year when a surge of pregnant women and unaccompanied children fleeing Central America poured into the Rio Grande Valley.

Soon after, people from Brownsville to El Paso said officials with the Vital Statistics Unit, the state office responsible for issuing birth certificates, began denying the applications of immigrant parents in the country illegally.

It can be difficult for undocumented immigrants in Texas to demonstrate parentage for the purpose of obtaining a birth certificate. A parent must prove legal status in the country or provide a current voter registration card, which many people do not have.

Without a birth certificate for their children, parents face significant barriers to enroll them in school or give consent for medical care.

A citizen may request his or her own birth certificate with a driver’s license, or a Social Security card and recent utility bill, for example, but to acquire those documents often calls for a birth certificate.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” Harbury said. “There are many more families out there that haven’t gotten birth certificates for their children.”

The lawsuit comes as a panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week to keep on hold President Barack Obama’s immigration policies to shield up to 5 million immigrants from deportation and provide them with work permits.

Obama’s immigration plan also includes deportation protections for parents of U.S. citizens and permanent residents, which had been scheduled to begin May 19.

“A birth certificate is necessary to apply” for deportation deferral, said Efrén C. Olivares, an attorney with the South Texas Civil Rights Project. “Without it, a person has no proof that he or she has a U.S. citizen child and cannot apply.”

Texas is the lead state among 26 that sued to stop Obama’s expansion of immigration policies and has won a temporary injunction to block them.

anelsen@express-news.net

Twitter: @amnelsen

Every state needs to immediately stop issuing birth certificates to children of people in our country illegally and should cancel all prior ones issued.

judy
I don't buy any thing from another country no way in hell only USA

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

NO. Only 2 counties are refusing to issue birth certificates. The state isn't involved in the lawsuit. Only 2 counties.

State law allows the use of a foreign ID if the mother lacks a Texas driver’s license or a U.S. passport...

Oh. I thought the state Vital Statistics Unit had stopped issuing state birth certificates to children of illegal aliens.