Thread: AZ: Health association fights anti-migrant plan

Health association fights anti-migrant plan
Measure would bar hospitals from issuing some birth certificates
Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services
Jan. 10, 2008 12:00 AM

The newest front in the battle over illegal immigration is dragging health-care workers into the fray.

The Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association is trying to kill a proposal by Rep. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, that would require its members to check the citizenship of patients who deliver babies at Arizona facilities.

If neither of the parents can prove citizenship, the hospital would be barred from issuing a regular birth certificate.

Babies of parents who are here legally but not citizens also would be denied regular birth certificates.

More to the point, Pearce said, it would mean that the baby would not automatically gain U.S. citizenship by virtue of being born in this country. And that would deny the child many state benefits, ranging from subsidized health care to lower tuition at state universities, now reserved for people in this country legally.

The proposal has alarmed John Rivers, the association's president.

"It's our job as health-care professionals to provide good, quality health care," he said. "It's not our job to be the enforcement arm for the state's immigration policies."

Pearce, architect of Arizona's new employer-sanctions law, had a one-word response: "Garbage."

"They don't see their job as having to follow the (U.S.) Constitution?" he said. "They don't see their job as having to follow the law?"

From a technical standpoint, Pearce said that if his measure is approved, checking parents' citizenship papers will be the law and a part of what hospitals are required to do.

Burden on parents
But Pearce also said he is not asking hospitals to get into the business of immigration enforcement.

"The burden is on those having babies to prove one of the parents is a citizen," he said. If those documents are not presented, Pearce said, it simply means the hospital cannot issue a regular birth certificate.

"It has nothing to do with the hospital except not issuing a fraudulent birth certificate," he said.

Rivers said the issue goes beyond any burden on the hospital. "We do not want to impose requirements on patients that potentially can serve as a barrier to their receiving care in the first place," he said.

"We don't want pregnant mothers (to be) reluctant to come to the hospital to have their babies delivered out of fear that they're going to be asked questions that are going to affect their ability to remain in this country."

Pearce said he wants to put his plan on the November ballot. That avoids the possibility it could be vetoed by Gov. Janet Napolitano. That, however, may be the least of his problems.

Pearce acknowledged courts have ruled the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, passed in the wake of the Civil War to provide equal protection under the law, guarantees citizenship to anyone born in this country. But he said extending citizenship to people born of parents not here legally is based on a misreading of the amendment.

His argument is based on the language of the amendment, which says that citizenship requires not just birth in the U.S. but that the person is "subject to the jurisdiction" of this country. And that, he said, does not apply to those here illegally.

But Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Phoenix, said it is Pearce who is misreading the Constitution.

She said that "jurisdiction" clause was inserted because Congress did not want to constitutionally grant citizenship and the right to vote to Native Americans. The phrase, she said, was based on the premise that Indians are members of sovereign nations and, therefore, not subject to U.S. jurisdiction.

But Sinema said visitors, legal or otherwise, are subject to U.S. jurisdiction, just as a foreigner who commits a crime here can be prosecuted in Arizona courts.

Lawsuit expected
Pearce said that once Arizona denies regular birth certificates to children born to people who are not here legally, there will be a lawsuit. He believes the courts will side with his view of the 14th Amendment, though.

His proposal on birth certificates is just one of several measures he is crafting this session to deal with the issue of illegal immigration. Others include:


• Expanding the state crime of trespass to cover anyone in this country without authorization.


• Requiring proof of legal presence in this country to register a vehicle or get a title.


• Denying workers'-compensation benefits to undocumented workers who are injured on the job.


• Barring municipalities from enacting policies that prohibit police officers from checking the immigration status of people they encounter.

The package, coupled with the sanctions bill and prior voter-approved measures, is designed to make Arizona less hospitable for people in the country illegally and pressure them to leave.

Make Arizona 'unfriendly'
There is at least anecdotal evidence the sanctions law already is doing that. Some Mexican nationals who normally return home to visit family at Christmas have indicated they may not return.

"It's a matter of cutting off the free stuff, stopping the benefits," Pearce said.

"I mean to make it unfriendly for those who break laws," he continued, comparing the measures to legislative efforts to stop drunken driving by imposing stiffer penalties. "What do you have to do to raise the bar so much that they stop?" He said taxpayers are burdened with the cost of "anchor babies" born to those in this country illegally.

The Pew Center for Hispanic Studies said in 2006 that about one out of every seven of the more than 1 million students in Arizona public schools are here because of illegal immigration. Although as many as 60,000 students are themselves here illegally, an additional 90,000 are children of illegal immigrants who, by virtue of their birth in this country, are considered citizens, according to the study.

Federal law requires states to educate all children regardless of immigration status, but most other programs can be reserved for legal residents, ranging from free health care for those who meet income restrictions to subsidized tuition at state universities.

Pearce said that if people here illegally leave because of the other measures, they will take their children, reducing the state's nearly $5 billion annual cost for education.
http://www.azcentral.com/abgnews/articl ... n0110.html

All you have to do is go back and read the transcripts of the debates before the 14th amendment was passed and see that all agreed that children of non citizens would not get automatic citizenship.Common sense tells anyone that everyone is under the jurisdiction of thier home country,why bother to even have the word jurisdiction in there if it has no meaning.Someone who believes they are automatic citizens explain to me what jurisdiction in thier opinion means? They went out of thier way it seems to me to make it clear that even indians who lived within our borders children were not citizens by birth.It may seem prejudice that they were trying to prevent indians from voting.The truth is that indians DID NOT at that time want to be in the united state and wanted thier own nation and were promised thier own nation where they could make thier own laws and have a say so.

We need a clarification on that law - and soon.