SAN JUAN, Texas — When Ruth Garcia's twins are born in two months, they'll have all the rights of U.S. citizens. They and their six brothers and sisters will be able to vote, apply for federal student loans and even run for president.
Garcia is an illegal immigrant who crossed into the country about 14 years ago, before her children were born, and the citizenship granted to her children and millions others like them is at the center of a divisive national debate.
Republicans are pushing for congressional hearings to consider changing the nation's 14th Amendment to deny such children the automatic citizenship the Constitution guarantees. They say women like Garcia are taking advantage of the constitutional amendment and paint a picture of pregnant women rushing across the border to give birth.
While a recent Pew Hispanic Center study shows 8 percent of the 4.3 million babies born in the U.S. in 2008 had at least one illegal parent, a closer examination shows that most children of illegal immigrants are born to parents like Garcia who have made the United States their home for years.
Out of 340,000 babies born to illegal immigrants in the United States in 2008, 85 percent of the parents had been in the country for more than a year, and more than half for at least five years, Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer for Pew, told The Associated Press.
And immigration experts say it's extraordinarily rare for immigrants to come to the U.S. just so they can have babies and get citizenship. In most cases, they come for economic reasons and better hospitals, and end up staying and raising families.
Garcia's husband has been deported and she earns a living selling tamales to other immigrants who live in fear of being deported from the slapdash, impoverished colonias that dot the Texas-Mexico border.
"I think that children aren't at fault for having been born here," Garcia said. "My children always have lived here. They've never gone to another country."
Under current immigration law, Garcia and others like her don't get U.S. citizenship even though their children are Americans.
With an estimated 11.1 million illegal immigrants living in the United States, the issue strikes a chord with many voters — people like retired Air Force nurse and pediatric nurse practitioner Susan Struck, 66, of Double Adobe, Ariz.
"People come over ... and they have babies with U.S. birth certificates, then they go back over the border with that Social Security number, with that birth certificate," and have access to public services, she said at a recent event near the border organized by conservative tea party activists.
Several prominent Republican leaders share Struck's beliefs on the issue. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has been a vocal advocate for changing the Constitution, and he helped the issue gain momentum heading into the midterm elections.
"Women have traveled from across the world for the purpose of adding a U.S. passport holder to their family, as far away as China, Turkey and as close as Mexico," said Jon Feere, legal analyst for the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for strict immigration laws.
Still, changing the Constitution is highly unlikely, legal scholars say. Measures have been introduced in each two-year congressional session since 2005, but none has made it out of committee. Constitutional changes require approval by two-thirds majorities in both chambers of Congress, an impossibility now because Democrats have the majority in both houses and most oppose such a measure. Even if Republicans gain power in November and legislation is passed, an amendment would still need to be ratified by three-fourths of the states.
To be sure, some pregnant Mexican women do come to the United States. In border cities like Nogales, women have been coming to the U.S. for decades to give birth, although the primary reason is better medical care, Santa Cruz County sheriff Tony Estrada said. Billboards advertising birthing services in Arizona line streets across the border in Nogales, Mexico.
Tucson Medical Center, 115 miles southeast of Phoenix, offers packages designed to provide inclusive care to new mothers. The program draws some residents of the northern Mexican state of Sonora who can afford its upfront costs and already have U.S. visas, spokesman Michael Letson said.
Princeton University demographer Douglas Massey said in 30 years studying Mexican immigration, he's never interviewed a migrant who said they came to the United States just to get citizenship for their children.
"Mexicans do not come to have babies in the United States," said Massey, who blames the tightening of the border in the 1990s for cutting off normal migration of men who used to come to work for a year or two and then go home. "They end up having babies in the United States because men can no longer circulate freely back and forth from homes in Mexico to jobs in the United States and husbands and wives quite understandably want to be together."
More common, he and other experts says, are families stuck with one child who is legal and others who aren't — like Beatriz Gomez, a 35-year-old illegal immigrant who came to Phoenix 11 years ago on a now-expired tourist visa from Arriaga in the Mexican state of Chiapas.
Her 12-year-old daughter was born in Mexico and is here illegally, but her two youngest children, ages 8 and 5, were born in the U.S. and are citizens.
"It's sad," Gomez said of her oldest daughter, who was only 1 when the family came to the United States and won't qualify for benefits such as in-state college tuition rates or federal student loans. "She studies hard, and she won't be able to go to a university like the other two."
Masterrogue666 posted at 8:29 am on Fri, Sep 3, 2010.
Ruth Garcia has been a criminal for 14 years? In that time she's had 6 kids, and two on the way. Tell me, does she receive ANY funds (which are meant for US Citizens) from the state or federal government?
Why hasn't she tried for citizenship? We both know why...
cheetah13 posted at 9:28 am on Fri, Sep 3, 2010.
I'm all for changing the 14th ammendment. It was put in place for slaves and not the mexicans to come and drain our system. We need to be like other countries. Whatever the citizenship of the mother is that is what the child should be.
Send them all back!
If the mother is illegal, ship them both. No more free ride on my tax money!
TruthSeeker posted at 12:18 pm on Fri, Sep 3, 2010.
Technically, the children of illegal aliens cannot become president. Their parents would have had to become U.S. citizens prior to their children being born on U.S. soil. Unfortunately, this is not being enforced. Neither Bill Richardson nor Bobby Jindal are qualified because both of their parents still held allegiance to foreign countries when they were born -- not to mention Obama's father's allegiance to another country, too. And Obama obviously holds allegiance to foreign countries over America.
longtime mesa posted at 12:44 pm on Fri, Sep 3, 2010.
Don't you just love it when the AP puts out these articles to drum up our sympathy? Whether an illegal alien has lived here for ten minutes or 14 years, they are still breaking the law. The whole line about how their children have never known any other home? These people KNOW they're breaking the law, and they KNOW that they're placing their children at risk; they just want someone else to pick up the tab.
Douglas Massey's statement about never meeting anyone who came here just to get citizenship is either a lie, or he's got his head in the sand (or some other dark place...). CBS News has actually aired segments with interviews of illegals in border hospital maternity wards, stating that's EXACTLY why they ran across the border when they went into labor. And most of those patients pay NOTHING for the care they get. Does anyone really think these women are raising their anchor babies to be law-abiding, tax-paying, productive members of US society? No, they raise them to live on every form of government assistance they can get.
I think this is one of the things which bothers me the most about illegal aliens, especially the ones who have come in the past decade--they have an absolutely OBSCENE sense of entitlement.
Accuracy posted at 12:58 pm on Fri, Sep 3, 2010.
Because of the inconvenience of a few thousand “anchor babies” a year, the push by congressional Republicans to deny automatic citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants. It’s a push to change the 14th Amendment Constitutional rights. But, there are others who have condemned the calls by Republicans to end birthright citizenship.
Citizenship by birth in America is a simple concept . . . If you are born in the U.S.A., then you are an American citizen just like you and me.
And we should never get rid of that because of the “anchor babies” or “jackpot babies” terms used to refer to a child born in the United States to illegal immigrants or other non-citizens.
RollerCam posted at 2:29 pm on Fri, Sep 3, 2010.
"I think that children aren't at fault for having been born here," Garcia said.
Maybe not. But you sure are, you illegal breeder/thief/cheater/invader.
rrjenn posted at 5:26 pm on Fri, Sep 3, 2010.
Right now in Texas, illegals amount to 60% of all births. Soon they will be the majority and those Texas electoral college votes will flip to democrats that support amnesty and open borders. The simple truth is that if this trend continues, illegals will be electing democratic presidents for the next few hundred years, and Whites will be lucky if they treat us better than we are treating them now. Fact is we are being invaded from the south, and we better start doing something soon unless we want an America that does not resemble us to leave to out children and their children.
CSalafia posted at 9:34 pm on Fri, Sep 3, 2010.
AZ Momma,
Comments like yours, referring to people as "animals" and children as "litter" are disgusting. They are on par with comment Nazis made about the Jews, and the Klan made about African Americans.
Congratulations on being just like them.