Rolling Stone - The Border War on Birthright Citizenship
When Texas began refusing birth certificates to the U.S-born children of undocumented immigrants, a legendary lawyer fought back
By Eric Benson October 29, 2015
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In 2013, an estimated 295,000 children were born in the U.S. who had at least one undocumented immigrant parent, according to the Pew Research Center, accounting for eight-percent of all domestic births. And Texas is home to 1.65 million undocumented immigrants, nearly 15 percent of the national total. It is reasonable to assume that tens of thousands of children are born to undocumented immigrants in Texas every year, and that a great many of them now lack birth certificates. "These quasi-citizens, outcasts, will likely experience the harsh effects of being unable to prove their true status for many years to come," reads the Mexican government's amicus brief. "We are witnessing the creation of a vulnerable citizenry: undocumented citizens."
Texas is an outlier in this regard, even among states that refuse to accept matrículas. In Arizona, parents can get a birth certificate for their children with a credible witness to attest to their identity and a notorized signature. In Arkansas, they can present a foreign passport without a U.S. visa. In Virginia, they can use a hospital birth letter. Even Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that advocates for harsher immigration restrictions, told the Austin-American Statesman that "the more I think of it, the more I come down against the Texas argument, reluctantly."
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Still, the timing seems awfully suspicious. The decision to deny foreign passports that lacked a U.S. visa came on the heels of President Obama's Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals, a 2012 policy that lifted the threat of deportation for as many as 1.7 million undocumented immigrants. The increasing rejection of the matrícula as a valid ID coincided with the Central American immigration "surge" in 2013 and 2014. And what appeared to be a widening crackdown on the matrícula this year followed a Texas-led lawsuit filed last December to block President Obama's new executive actions on immigration, one of which — the Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA) — offers immigration deferrals and work authorizations to the undocumented parents of U.S. citizens.
"In order for an immigrant parent to apply for DAPA, they would need their U.S.-born child's birth certificate for that application," Ana Hernandez, a Democratic state representative from Houston, tells me. "I don't think that it's a coincidence that after that was announced, they began to enforce this policy."
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-border-war-on-birthright-citizenship-20151029#ixzz3qBPMhNFF
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Jennifer Harbury is someone who has worked her heart out relentless in pursuit of justice for suffering people in this hemisphere. She has suffered, and grieved far more than a whole crowd of people, and earned the deepest respect from many everywhere.
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Best wishes to Maria, hope for her. She has the help of someone who's the best.
Thank you for this information.
