Thread: 'Mixed status' tears apart families

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/200 ... atus_x.htm



'Mixed status' tears apart families
Posted 4/25/2006 11:58 PM ET
By Wendy Koch, USA TODAY
Deportation split Julie Santos' family in 2001, forcing her husband, an illegal immigrant, to return to Mexico while she and their two U.S.-born children remained in her hometown of Chicago.
George Santos had worked and paid taxes in the USA for 15 years but is barred from ever returning because he used false identity papers to claim he was a U.S. citizen.

"He has said, 'Continue with your life and forget about me,' but I can't," says Julie Santos, 40, a real estate agent and secretary of the Latino Family Unity Campaign. She calls often and, whenever possible, visits him in Mexico with their 10-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter.

About 2 million families nationwide face a similarly gut-wrenching risk of deportation because the children are U.S.-born citizens but at least one parent is an illegal immigrant, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. If deported, the parent must decide whether to leave the kids with relatives in the USA or take them along.

Many "mixed status" families are created because the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution grants automatic citizenship to all children born in the country except those of foreign diplomats.

"It's a nearly absolute birthright citizen, and in that way, it's unusual. But it's not exceptional," says Peter Spiro, international law professor at the University of Georgia School of Law.

He says most countries have tighter limits on citizenship, but several Western Hemisphere countries, including Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, also grant it to all children born on their land. He says other countries are adopting broader U.S.-style language.

As Congress returns from a two-week recess and again wrestles with the thorny issue of immigration reform, some House Republicans have proposed limiting birthright citizenship.

Rep. Nathan Deal, R-Ga., and 83 GOP co-sponsors are pushing a bill that would restrict automatic citizenship at birth to children of U.S. citizens and legal residents. He says he doesn't expect the measure to be included in any broader reform package this year but hopes it generates debate.

Mixed-status families pose "a huge problem," says Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which backs Deal's bill. They "complicate an already complicated issue."

At least 3.1 million U.S.-born children live in families headed by an illegal resident, the Pew Hispanic Center estimates. They account for two-thirds of all children of illegal immigrants.

Deal argues that birthright citizenship is a magnet for many illegal immigrants who use so-called "anchor babies" to establish a U.S. foothold. These U.S.-born children are eligible for government services, and at 21, can petition for their parents' residency.

Deal says the 14th Amendment was not intended to include these children.

Historians say the Amendment was ratified in 1868 to ensure the citizenship of freed slaves. "There's no question" that it would have excluded children of illegal immigrants had there been many illegal workers at the time, says Peter Schuck, professor at Yale Law School and author of Citizens, Strangers and In-Betweens.

The amendment has been misinterpreted for more than a century, says John Eastman, director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence at the Claremont Institute. He argues that its authors, in granting citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States," meant only those not owing allegiance to a foreign power, not simply those born on its soil.

Whatever its intent, birthright citizenship has been widely accepted as applying to all children born in the USA.

"There are good arguments" for and against this citizenship, says Schuck. He says some illegal immigrants may take advantage of it, but "it does not lead to a multigenerational, long-term population of people who are not citizens."

Schuck says Germany has had big problems because it has many immigrants, particularly from Turkey, living their entire lives there who weren't voting citizens and felt alienated. As a result, he says, Germany and France have broadened their citizenship laws to include more immigrants.

Spiro says children of illegal immigrants will likely spend their entire lives in the USA. By depriving them of citizenship, he says, "you'd have a significant portion of the population being legally subordinated on an inter-generational basis."

Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., member of the House Judiciary Committee, says Deal's bill would create more illegal residents. "It's unconstitutional. It creates a larger underclass, and it's unenforceable," he says. "It does nothing to secure our borders." For decades, the undocumented parents in "mixed status" families have been deported. Some, citing the plight of their U.S.-born kids, have been spared.

Immigration judges decide whether a parent qualifies for a waiver on a "case by base basis," says Ernestine Fobbs, spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In fiscal 2005, she says more than 162,000 people were deported from the USA, but it's unclear how many had U.S.-born children or spouses.

Waivers are "much less frequent than in the past," says John Trasvina, interim president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. He says Congress has tightened the criteria since 1996, giving judges less discretion to stay a deportation.

Currently, deportation can be suspended for illegal immigrants only if they have lived in the USA longer than 10 years, have no criminal record and can prove their removal would cause "extremely unusual hardship" to a close relative with legal status.

Julie Santos says her husband, George, owned a home and worked full-time as a furniture refinisher in Chicago. She says he did not seek legal residency because he did not want to admit to his employer that he was in the country illegally.

They considered moving the family to Mexico, but economic conditions are too tough.

She tries to keep him connected to the family, but it's difficult.

"Now sometimes it feels I'm talking about a ghost," Julie Santos says.
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IMO, that's why a Guest Worker Program will never work.
Once they drop their Anchor Baby they are set for life.

They broke the law had kids and now everyone is supposed to feel sorry because they got caught. NOT I

This was their plan by having these anchor babies is to get the sympathy of the american citizens to let them stay. Wrongo!!! Take your whole family back to where you came from.

cry me a river.

Well I happen to feel sorry for those kids. This whole immigration thing has become such a mess due to our government's incompetence that no good is going to come out of this. "We have smoked for 30 years and now we have cancer."

I feel sorry for them too, but if their parents really loved them they would not have put them in this situation.

I think part of this problem lies with Mexico. If these children were granted "dual citizenship" so they were both Mexican and American then there would be less of a problem. But Mexico would prefer these anchor babies and their parents suckled on that overly burdered mother-breast of the U.S. It is not the fault of America that these women come here to have their babies. Mexico encourages it.
If we enacted laws that would say that it is only legal immigrants or American citizens who could walk into an emergency room and deliver babies, if we had laws that said that illegals could not get on our welfare systme with their anchor babies or that if they did so they would have to place these babies up for adoption and sign papers prior to giving birth --- then see how many of them would cross the border for their anchor baby "free ride."
Welfare was never entended to be a way of life pregnant women who come here illegally.