Thread: Ex-Contra activist represents US children of illegal immigra

Ex-Contra activist represents US children of illegal immigrants

The Associated PressPublished: October 26, 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/10/ ... php?page=1

MIAMI: Experts say Nora Sandigo's attempt to get the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the deportation of illegal immigrants with U.S.-born children does not have a chance.

Sandigo just nods — she has heard it all before.

Skeptics scoffed when the immigration activist and former Contra rebel supporter pushed to stop the deportation of thousands of Central Americans immigrants who had fled their region's civil wars in the 1980s. Then Sandigo helped bring a class-action lawsuit for them, prompting the U.S. Congress to pass a law protecting them in 1997. Several years later, again as skeptics watched, she helped thousands more Central Americans win temporary protection after natural disasters struck.

"We have to try," said Sandigo. "The worst battle is the one not waged."

This time, her lawsuit seeks to allow the illegal immigrant parents of U.S.-born children — who automatically become citizens — 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 gives them another way to stay.

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Already, illegal immigrants living 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 the lawsuit. Ultimately, it would cover an estimated 4 million children of illegal immigrants who have no criminal background.

As U.S. citizens, children whose parents are deported are allowed to stay. The question is, with whom? Most have to return with their parents to a country and culture they have never known.

Sandigo, 42, is in many ways an unlikely immigration activist. Although she has worked with Democrats such as Senator Edward M. Kennedy on immigration, her virulent opposition to Nicaragua's socialist Sandinista government has won her respect among conservative Republicans in Congress, as has her support for free trade. She has visited the White House at least five times in the last year.

"It is so good to have Nora be so involved at the local, state and federal level on immigration reform because it balances the ideological spectrum," said U.S. Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who has known Sandigo for more than a decade.

Sandigo fled Nicaragua as a teen, leaving her 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 snuck her brother out of the country at age 16 before he could be drafted into the military. She became a U.S. citizen in the early 1990s.

Her support for free trade agreements with Latin America puts her at odds with many immigrant advocates who fear such deals will not sufficiently protect worker rights and small businesses.

Sandigo said 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.

But Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors strict limits on immigration, said the new lawsuit will only encourage more people to come to the U.S.

"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. No question about it."

Sandigo said she is not asking for open borders and favors more border security. She simply believes those immigrants who have worked for years in the U.S. should not be separated from their children or forced to uproot them.

Among the children in her lawsuit are 15-year-old Teresa Flores and Ivan Torres, 8.

Teresa and her four siblings awoke in April 2006 to see her mother taken away by immigration agents. She dropped out of school to take care of her younger brother before returning to Mexico. In the U.S., where she lived for more than a decade, Teresa's mother earned enough to provide the basics for her children. In Mexico, she did not. Teresa again was forced to work and eventually 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.

Ivan's mother has not been caught by immigration authorities, but she and her husband, who run a janitorial service, say they fear they will be caught any day. That is why they signed up Ivan

I don't want to get to that point. I was too afraid even to go to a lawyer, because you hear cases of fraud," said Noemi Salas, 29, of Mexico, who came to the U.S. in 1999 on a temporary work permit and never left.

The lawsuit over the children at first was filed in federal court, naming President George W. Bush and Homeland Security. But it was then withdrawn and filed directly with the Supreme Court because federal law has severely limited lower courts' abilities to hear deportation cases, and especially class-action lawsuits.

The move is risky. The Supreme Court rarely takes cases that have yet to move through the lower courts.

Sandigo is lobbying Congress for a bill to support her case.

Even if the Supreme Court accepts the case, the odds against Sandigo are great, said University of Virginia law Professor David Martin, who served as Immigration and Naturalization Services general counsel under former President Bill Clinton. Courts have typically ruled that there is nothing unconstitutional about a U.S. child being forced to live outside the country, he 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.

He added that cases like Sandigo's likely will support arguments by those who want to remove automatic citizenship for children of illegal immigrants born in the U.S.

Sandigo leaves the legal details to others. But she is adamant about one thing.

"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."

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."

They need to turn that anger on their self-serving deceitful breeders. These people and their anchor babies are going to be angry until we serve the US and everything in it on a silver platter to their deceitful, calculating [MOD EDIT} They are already the enemy within so we don't have to worry about that being an issue.

We need to face reality these children of illegal aliens are no more Americans then are any other children born in their parents countries.

If a child is born to two non cityzens of the United states of America that childs cityzenship is that of the parents. Not the US's

We are not creating anything the parents created every bit of it!!



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