Move to Limit Citizenship Gains Support

The image, if true, is a jarring one: Women about to give birth wait at the Mexican border. As the moment nears, they head north to the nearest United States pay phone. With one quick call to 911, the childbirth is funded by U.S. taxpayers and the newborn receives the ultimate birthday gift--U.S. citizenship.

That’s the scenario described by Ron Prince, the leader of California’s Proposition 187 campaign and prime backer of what is being called Save Our State II--an effort to amend the U.S. Constitution to end automatic citizenship for the offspring of illegal immigrants born on U.S. soil.

Immigration experts scoff at the notion that pregnant women are streaming into the United States as childbirth looms. “I’d love to hear those 911 tapes,” said Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles), a member of the House immigration subcommittee. Added U.S. Border Patrol Agent Marco Ramirez: “We have apprehended pregnant females but it’s not like we see them hopping over the fence every day.”

But while Prince is probably exaggerating the problem of late-term immigrants, statistics show that tens of thousands of children are born to undocumented mothers in California every year and that, just as Prince says, the offspring are as legal as the President of the United States.

As a result, the children are entitled to government benefits--chiefly, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), which is doled out to undocumented immigrants in the millions of dollars. And besides the benefits, the citizen children are able to sponsor their parents for citizenship once they reach age 21, a concept that stirs the ire of those fighting to curb illegal immigration.

Increasingly, from Prince’s group to Gov. Pete Wilson to San Fernando Valley-area congressmen in both political parties, the focus in the illegal immigration fight is broadening from undocumented men hustling across the border for work and undocumented women bringing their undocumented children along to those not yet born.

“We should quit rewarding those who enter our country illegally with citizenship for their children,” said Rep. Howard P. (Buck) McKeon (R-Santa Clarita), who has co-sponsored one of the four citizenship initiatives introduced in the House of Representatives.

Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills), an early backer of the idea, boiled down the automatic citizenship ban this way: “If Family A comes up illegally from Tijuana, and Mommy and Daddy bring a baby with them, none of them are citizens. If Family B has Daddy and a very pregnant Mommy who has her baby two days after she gets here, why should those two families be treated differently?”

The idea of toughening up citizenship rules has been around for years.

Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) first introduced such a constitutional amendment in the House in 1991, although it was dismissed by most then as a far-out notion with little chance of passage. He now heads a task force on immigration reform formed by House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and considers the idea ready for consideration.

“I am very, very careful about tinkering with the Constitution,” Gallegly said. “This is a last resort. I’m not being critical of anybody trying to find a way to improve their lifestyle. I don’t fault them at all. I do fault the United States government for providing the motive for people to break the law. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that providing automatic citizenship and all of its benefits is an incentive. It may not be the sole reason. But it is at least one reason.”

As the fervor to crack down on illegal immigration has intensified in recent years, the citizenship ban approach has gained increasing support--in Congress and California.

Congressional hearings investigating the idea could begin as early as next month, drawing into the issue Reps. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) and Carlos J. Moorhead (R-Glendale), who are members of the immigration subcommittee but have not endorsed the constitutional amendment. In addition, the Orange County-based Save Our State group is preparing an advisory ballot initiative in support of the constitutional amendment. Organizers predict it will sweep the state with the same intensity as Proposition 187.

Nationwide statistics on the number of children born to illegal immigrants are not compiled, immigration experts say. Nor are definitive cost estimates of the current automatic citizenship policy. But supporters of more strict citizenship rules say there is more than enough evidence in California to indicate a problem exists.

In Los Angeles County, a 1991 survey showed 28,800 children born to illegal immigrant mothers at the four public hospitals, accounting for nearly two-thirds of all births. Statewide, nearly 96,000 babies were born to undocumented women and covered by the Medi-Cal program, at a cost of more than $230 million, according to a 1992 state Department of Health Services report.

“We do know that it happens,” said Prince of the Save Our State group, discounting the need for more empirical data on the problem. “What an academic study is going to tell you is how many times. If it happens once, it’s a problem. If it happens 1,000 times, it’s a big problem.”

Immigrant rights groups say such a constitutional amendment would be frightfully wrong. They argue that it is job opportunities, not citizenship, that prompts immigrants to risk their lives to come to the United States. Changing citizenship rules, the critics say, would create a massive, disenfranchised underclass.

“We believe this flies in the face of the 200 years of history of this country,” said Cecilia Munoz, an immigration analyst with the National Council of La Raza. “The only thing this would accomplish is to increase the number of illegal immigrants in this country.”

Munoz also raises logistical concerns. She herself is pregnant and she wonders if all Latinas, citizens or not, would be required to produce proof of citizenship at childbirth.

A legal analysis of the proposal commissioned by Munoz’s group and the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights concludes: “As a matter of constitutional and immigration policy, repealing a pillar of constitutional law simply to attempt to address issues raised by undocumented immigration would be exceedingly ill-advised.”

The Founding Fathers did not dwell on illegal immigration while drawing up this country’s seminal document of governance. And it was the U.S.-born children of slaves, not border crossers, who were in mind when the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was approved in 1868. African Americans were considered less than full citizens at the time and the amendment called for an end to that by granting citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside . . .”

Because the 14th Amendment stems from such an ignominious part of U.S. history, tampering with it stirs especially strong emotions.

“It’s scary to think of our country going back to a time when people could be born here and wouldn’t even be second-class citizens,” said Charles Wheeler, director of the National Immigration Law Center in Los Angeles. “They would be second-class persons.”

Those pushing for the change disagree.

“It’s not an extreme idea,” said Beilenson. “We only have this provision by accident because we unfortunately had slavery in this country. A country does not have to provide this to be a free, democratic country. It’s not like we’re repealing the 1st Amendment or even the 2nd Amendment. . . .”

The U.S. Supreme Court has never ruled directly on the central question of whether the 14th Amendment covers children of illegal immigrants. It did, in the 1898 Wong Kim Ark case, decide that the U.S.-born son of Chinese nationals was entitled to citizenship. The parents in the case were permanent residents of California, not illegal immigrants, and those on both sides of the constitutional amendment debate use that case to buttress their arguments.

In every country around the globe, citizenship is offered through one of two legal principles, or a combination thereof-- jus sanguinis , in which citizenship is based on heritage, and jus soli , in which the determining element is where the child is born.

Most nations offer citizenship to children whose parents are nationals, and rely on jus soli in special cases, such as that of an orphaned child. But the United States and about a dozen other nations--including Canada, Spain, Venezuela and Ireland--follow both principles equally.

Most agree that it would take a constitutional amendment to tighten citizenship rules and that adoption--requiring a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress and ratification by three-quarters of the states--is not around the corner. One backer, Rep. Brian P. Bilbray (R-San Diego), has introduced a bill that would accomplish the change by statute, without the bother of a constitutional amendment, although many say his method would probably become as bogged down in the courts as Proposition 187.

Regardless of the approach, there is agreement that the movement has been gaining steam in recent years, with scores of congressmen now endorsing the various proposals in the House. Backers now mention it in the same breath with more accepted controls, such as beefed-up border security and counterfeit-proof employee identification cards.

“I was considered a far-out radical when I first suggested this,” Gallegly said. “Now, more and more people are saying it makes some sense.”