"To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing,
if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803

Step Away From the Baby

by Hal_10000

I honestly don’t know what to do about this:

Federal immigration agents were searching a house in Ohio last month when they found a young Honduran woman nursing her baby.

The woman, Saída Umanzor, is an illegal immigrant and was taken to jail to await deportation. Her 9-month-old daughter, Brittney Bejarano, who was born in the United States and is a citizen, was put in the care of social workers.

The decision to separate a mother from her breast-feeding child drew strong denunciations from Hispanic and women’s health groups. Last week, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency rushed to issue new guidelines on the detention of nursing mothers, allowing them to be released unless they pose a national security risk.

The case exposes a recurring quandary for immigration authorities as an increasing number of American-born children of illegal immigrants become caught up in deportation operations. With the Bush administration stepping up enforcement, the immigration agency has been left scrambling to devise procedures to deal with children who, by law, do not fall under its jurisdiction because they are citizens.

So what do you do here? As cruel as it sounds, I’m disinclined to go the liberal route and allow people to stay in this country because they downloaded a citizen. I also think, in some ways, the government is taking a Solomon-esque split the baby path by saying, “Oh, we won’t rip up the family until after she’s done breast-feeding!”

To my mind, there are two way to go about this. One is to amend the Constitution or establish law that the 14th Amendment only applies to people born in this country legally. The other is to deport the kid with the parent but give them the right to return and claim citizenship when they are adults or have a guardian that is legal.

And I don’t mean to sound heartless or anything, but I have to place some blame on the parents:

While the federal government does not keep statistics on the children of deportees, immigration lawyers said that most immigrants who are deported take their children with them, even if the children are American citizens.

My wife is a legal immigrant from Australia. If she were ever deported, I would pick up and move the family with her. But could I do it if she came from, say, Iran?

Comments

Posted by on 11/19/07 at 01:40 PM from

I work with a guy that makes a very convincing argument that you can’t interpret the 14th amendment to apply to just anyone born here.  In order to be a citizen you had have been born here lawfully.

No place else on the planet bestows citizenship upon the whelps of illegals that happen to be passing through, why should the USA?

Posted by Brian at Tomfoolery on 11/19/07 at 06:41 PM from

See United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), which held that:

In a 6-2 decision, the Court held that under the Fourteenth Amendment, a child born in the United States of parents of foreign descent who, at the time of the child’s birth are subjects of a foreign power but who have a permanent domicile and residence in the United States and are carrying on business in the United States, and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under a foreign power, and are not members of foreign forces in hostile occupation of United States territory, becomes a citizen of the United States at the time of birth.

Thus, you’d have to get those old goats on the Court to overturn a longstanding decision, something not even the most right wing of courts would do.

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