Should babies born in the U.S. automatically become citizens, regardless of their parents’ immigration status?
The short answer is absolutely not.
The long answer is more complicated, historically and emotionally.
Americans have always had the right and ability to change our laws as our needs change. The question of who has a right to citizenship has changed more than once.
As a new country, we were concerned with who was eligible to be president or vice president. African immigrants — slaves — had no citizenship rights.
In 1857, the Supreme Court affirmed noncitizenship status for anyone of African ancestry. In its famous Dred Scott decision, the court ruled that an enslaved man could not sue for his freedom in federal court because he was not — and could not become — an American citizen.
After the Civil War, the citizenship of former slaves was addressed by the 14th Amendment. In a citizenship clause that was written expressly for those of African descent, our law was amended so that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States … are citizens of the United States.”
Well into the early 1900s, we interpreted that law to be applicable to the millions of U.S.-born children of European immigrants.
To stem the tide of European immigration, we used the Emergency Immigration Act of 1921 and other legislation to set limits. And in 1965, we limited Latin American immigration.
When the path to prized legal American citizenship narrows, enterprising and intelligent people find another way: “anchor babies.”
Whether they are poor mothers who sneak across our Southern border or wealthy mothers who jet in from China, foreigners know that giving birth on American soil gets them in. Or, rather, their children, who then have the right to reside in the U.S., access our educational and health care systems, and, most important, sponsor family members who also wish to become American citizens.
The word is out. An entire cottage industry — birth tourism — has sprung up to facilitate this path to citizenship.
Our laws are written such that babies so born may not legally reside in our country until they turn 18. How the laws are written, however, does not reflect how they are enforced.
Deportation is distasteful in the best of circumstances and can be heartbreaking when children are involved. Some larger American cities have dubbed themselves “sanctuary cities” wherein employees are instructed not to report unauthorized immigrants within their borders. Elsewhere, controversial deportations are readily pushed aside to focus on illegal immigration, border security and comprehensive immigration reform.
It’s a mess. We can’t afford it. If we were still a land of boundless opportunities, we could still welcome boundless numbers of immigrants to our shores. Instead we’ve become a land of economic brinkmanship.
These children and their families stretch our resources. The Center for Immigration Studies found that 57 percent of households headed by immigrants (legal or illegal) used at least one welfare program, and that a “large share” of this social welfare is received on behalf of U.S.-born children who are American citizens.
We have no comprehensive immigration plan that would address anchor babies and their parents, and we have no stomach for deporting them. Real progress may take years, within which another 400,000 U.S.-born children of immigrants will obtain citizenship annually.
The solution is simple. We must stop granting citizenship to U.S.-born children of anyone who makes it over our border, or into a maternity hospital.
It’s time to change the laws again.
Donna Carol Voss is an author, blogger and speaker based in Kaysville, Utah.
