http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/edi ... 17073.html

Sept. 26, 2006, 9:15PM
Anchor babies
A constitutional amendment killing the hopes of immigrants' children would cost U.S. society deeply.


Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

The evidence is anecdotal, but plausible. A growing number of undocumented immigrants, border health officials say, are bearing children in U.S. hospitals. The resulting cost is immense. It's believable, because although immigrant women have fewer children than they did 20 years ago, the number of immigrant women in this country is higher.

That's a far different scenario from the more sensational one peddled by some immigration-control activists. Droves of pregnant Latin American women, they suggest, are marching here across desert, mountain and river expressly to bear American children. Their so-called "anchor babies" ostensibly are part of the parents' plans to reduce their chances of deportation from the United States.

The distinction between these two accounts is an important one. In response to the so-called anchor baby trend, some lawmakers are proposing amending the U.S. Constitution to deny the citizenship now conferred on all infants born in the United States.

That measure, the thinking goes, would ward off the stampede of women coming here to bear children and thwart illegal immigrants' schemes to breed their own citizenship sponsors. In fact, having a U.S. citizen baby will not help a parent fight removal.

The proposed amendment is a foolish idea that could create profound social problems that modern Americans have been mostly and blessedly spared.

No one knows for sure how many babies are born each year to undocumented parents. But the number does seem to be rising. In Texas, Medicaid paid for births of 53,276 children of noncitizens in 2002. Last year the number was 64,319. These numbers, though, include undocumented immigrants and immigrants who are living and working here legally.

Anecdotally, though, hospital administrators recently told Chronicle reporter James Pinkerton that undocumented immigrants make up a huge share of their expenses. "We believe that approximately 70 to 80 percent of our obstetrics patients are undocumented," a Harris County Hospital District administrator told Pinkerton.

That expense is a grave problem. But despite the alarmists' fantasies, it's not a result of immigrants strategizing how to exploit U.S. constitutional rights.

Immigration experts say there's little evidence that such planning is a major motivation for immigration here. Instead, most immigrants who have children here are in the United States to work. The expenses of border obstetric wards reflect the miserable opportunities for workers in Latin America — that and U.S. health, labor and immigration policies in complete denial of reality.

There's little we can do about neighboring countries that force their ambitious citizens to trudge north. But Congress can create immigration policies that acknowledge our vast market for foreign labor — and that permit those workers to pay their fair share.

A coherent immigration system would effectively police the borders, while creating sane laws for visiting or guest workers. Part of that law should include required payment into a bare-bones insurance pool. Obviously, such insurance would include prenatal and delivery care.

The way to ease the financial anchor around border hospitals' necks is not to kill the hopes of children starting life there. Stripping these infants of their chance to strive, invest and sacrifice on behalf of the land where they're born could cost this society infinitely more than the price of a hospital stay.