Thread: Activist Seeks Help for Immigrants' Kids

Activist Seeks Help for Immigrants' Kids
1. October 27, 2007 - 12:04pm

By LAURA WIDES-MUNOZ
Associated Press Writer

MIAMI (AP) - Experts say Nora Sandigo doesn't have a prayer in her bid to get the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the deportation of illegal immigrants with U.S.-born children.
Sandigo just nods _ she's heard it all before.
Naysayers scoffed when the immigration activist and former supporter of Nicaragua Contra rebels worked to stop the deportation of thousands of Central Americans immigrants who'd fled their region's civil wars in the 1980s. But her work prompted Congress to pass a law protecting them in 1997.
Experts said the same thing before she helped thousands more Central Americans win temporary protection after natural disasters struck several years later.
"We have to try. The worst battle is the one not waged," said Sandigo, a single mother of two who runs the nonprofit immigrant advocacy group American Fraternity and owns two small businesses.
Illegal immigrants in Florida, New York, California and Illinois have asked Sandigo to become the legal guardian of their 600 children, so she could help the children if the parents are deported.
About 100 children have been entered into her lawsuit seeking to allow the parents to stay in the U.S. until Congress passes an immigration bill that would give them legal status or until the Department of Homeland Security provides them another avenue to remain. The lawsuit eventually could cover an estimated 4 million children.Children born in the U.S. are automatically citizens, even if their parents are illegal immigrants. If their parents are deported, they are allowed to stay, but most have to return with their parents to a country and culture they've never known.
Sandigo's lawsuit has been filed directly with the Supreme Court because federal law has severely limited lower courts' abilities to hear deportation cases, especially class-action lawsuits.
It is a long shot. The Supreme Court rarely takes cases that have not moved through the lower courts.
However, she said the lawsuit is the best option since the U.S. Senate failed Wednesday to revive a bill to allow some illegal immigrant students to seek U.S. residency _ likely dooming any immigration bills this year.
Sandigo, 42, fled Nicaragua as a teen, leaving her own parents behind, after the socialist Sandinista government confiscated her family's farm. During the 1980s, she provided the U.S.-backed Contra insurgents with clothes and "everything that was needed" and later spirited her 16-year-old brother out of the country before he could be drafted. She became a U.S. citizen in the early 1990s.
Her support of free trade agreements with Latin America puts her at odds with many immigrant advocates who fear such deals won't sufficiently protect worker rights and small businesses, but Sandigo says free trade and immigration go together.
"I don't want people to say we are just trying to bring more immigrants to the U.S. I want people to be able to stay in their countries and find work," she said.
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors strict limits on immigration, said her
"Family relationships and employment are what bring people here," he said. "On the other hand, if having a U.S.-born child is a guaranteed get-out-of-jail-free card, then it will become a magnet."1. Sandigo said she's not asking for open borders and favors more border security. She simply believes immigrants who've worked for years in the U.S. shouldn't be separated from their children or forced to uproot them.
Among the children in her lawsuit is 15-year-old Teresa Flores of Yakima, Wash.
Teresa and her four siblings awoke in April 2006 to see her mother hauled off by immigration agents. She dropped out of school to take care of her younger brother before returning to the Mexican town of La Huerta, Jalisco, where her mother now works as a waitress. That job does not pay Teresa's mother enough to provide the basics for her children, so Teresa returned to the U.S. to live with another family and catch up in school.
"As a citizen, I want to be heard. I want to be with her," Teresa said.
Even if the Supreme Court accepts Sandigo's case, the odds against her are great, says University of Virginia law Professor David Martin, who served as Immigration and Naturalization Services general counsel under President Clinton.
Courts have typically ruled that there is nothing unconstitutional about a U.S. child being forced to live outside the country, Martin said. "It's up to the parents to figure out the custody case. The child suffers no risk to his or her citizenship status," he said.
Sandigo is adamant.
"By sending parents back, what are you creating here? You're creating children who are going to be resentful, angry," she said. "You're creating enemies within the country."

http://www.federalnewsradio.com/index.p ... 368&page=2

Stop giving citizenship to children born in the US to illegal alien parents. Continue to deport the entire illegal alien clans.

I guess if one breaks the law long enough it diminishes the crime, and there should be no punishment. Let's see, I wonder if that should apply to thieves, embezzlers, drug dealers and tax evaders who have managed to escape detection.

I'm so sick of hearing the sob stories. No one forced them to enter this country illegally and to deliberately give birth. This would be a non-issue if they would stop granting automatic citizenship to children born to illegal aliens. They need to leave this country and take their anchor babies with them.

"Family relationships and employment are what bring people here," he said. "On the other hand, if having a U.S.-born child is a guaranteed get-out-of-jail-free card, then it will become a magnet."1. Sandigo said she's not asking for open borders and favors more border security. She simply believes immigrants who've worked for years in the U.S. shouldn't be separated from their children or forced to uproot them.

Uproot them? They uproot them when they bring them in this country and they are separated from them when they come here or leave them in Mexico, etc. They did not speak English when they came but when they go back they do know the language. They speak the language because many of the parents do not speak English.

Originally Posted by dyehard39

"You're creating enemies within the country."

Then do like we did to Japanese-Americans who did not pledge sole allegiance to the US during WWII, revoke their US citizenship and deport them.