$6 Billion a Year for Mexican “Anchor Babies?”
Special Report | By Andy Selepak | June 5, 2007
The practice of birthright citizenship has been all but done away with in the industrial world.
Another major flaw in the Senate immigration bill is the failure to repeal the provision that babies born to illegal aliens in the U.S. get automatic U.S. citizenship. This is known as birthright citizenship.
Birthright citizenship is one of the media's powerful tools to advance the Senate immigration bill. The media use young children, even babies, as showpieces, arguing that if the government does not legalize, or grant amnesty to their parents, then these children will be left without mothers and fathers if their parents are deported. It's one sob story after another.
An example was a May 20, 2007, article in the Washington Post Style section using a color half-page photo that covered the entire upper fold of the front page with the picture of a young girl crying while being held in her mother's arms. The photo ran with the headline "Poster Child." It showed a March 7 photo of 2-year-old Tomasa Mendez, "crying in her mother's arms because her father was suspected of being in the U.S. illegally..." Mendez was born here; her parents were not. Her father was taken into custody by immigration authorities for doing illegal work at a Massachusetts clothing factory that makes backpacks for U.S. military personnel. The implication however was clear--that her father, and perhaps her mother, might be deported, and the poor child would be left behind.
The Post and Illegals
Notice that the Post says her father was "suspected" of being in the U.S. illegally when there is absolutely no doubt he and his wife entered the country illegally and had this child. We can't even expect the basic facts of the story from the Post because they tend to make the parents look bad. And sympathy for illegals is a given at this paper. The Post, of course, is the paper associated with the Philip L. Graham Fund, which provided funds to Casa de Maryland, an illegal alien support group.
The Post exploits the little girl, Tomasa, and calls her photo "iconic" of the immigration debate, rather than use photos of illegal aliens climbing over border fences, or of illegal alien terrorists that were responsible for planning terrorist attacks here on U.S. soil, or of illegal alien sex predators, or of the illegal aliens that commit crimes here in the U.S.
This is the face--a crying girl--that pro-illegal alien supporters and illegal aliens themselves are using to support their cause. The Post even claims that Tomasa has come to "symbolize" the national debate on immigration. According to the Post, "thousands of posters and fliers featuring Tomasa's tearful visage" have been made to influence the public and Congress and that the same photo was used on "placards carried by marchers at immigrant-rights rallies from Denver to New York to Washington."
But Tomasa is not the face of immigrant rights; she is the child of illegal aliens. Tomasa lives in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and on March 6, ICE agents raided a factory there and detained 361 workers that the Post calls "suspected of being in this country illegally," including Tomasa's father, Hector Mendez. The factory that the U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) raided where 361 suspected illegal aliens were working was Michael Bianco Inc.
This is not a case of innocent until proven guilty. Tomasa's mother Dominga asked the Post to not print her last name, which is different from her husband's, "for fear that authorities would detect her own undocumented status." In other words, she's an illegal, too. Dominga and Hector came to the U.S. from Guatemala six years ago, and had Tomasa on U.S. soil, making her a U.S. citizen. They are responsible for their own plight. They knowingly violated U.S. laws.
A spokesperson for ICE, Pat Reilly, responded to the Post's insinuation that the government is to blame for the girl's predicament. Reilly said, "You should look back to the decision the parents made in coming to this country without legal status."
The Plan
These families knew exactly what they were doing when they came to the U.S. and had a child born on U.S. soil. And we know and understand exactly what they're doing. For illegal immigrants, having a child born in the U.S. becomes the Golden Ticket to staying here in this country. Numbers USA calls these children of illegal alien mothers "anchor babies" because they become eligible to sponsor for legal immigration most of their relatives, including their illegal-alien mothers, when they turn 21 years of age, thus becoming the U.S. "anchor" for an extended immigrant family.
Although birthright citizenship was never intended to be the law of the land, and is a flawed interpretation of the 14th Amendment, birthright citizenship accounts for more than 380,000 children each year, born to illegal alien mothers that become citizens simply because their mothers gave birth on U.S. soil.
However, even this figure could be low. The Federation for Immigration Reform (FAIR) estimates there are between 287,000 and 363,000 children born to illegal aliens each year. These numbers are based on the crude birth rate of the total foreign-born population (33 births per 1,000) and official estimates of the size of the illegal alien population--between 8.7 and 11 million.
However, the Bear Stearns investment firm and others have concluded that the actual number of illegal aliens in the United States could be as high as 20 million. When using the higher estimate of 20 million illegal immigrants and FAIR's 33 births per 1,000, this would roughly double FAIR's estimate to approximately 574,000 to 726,000 anchor babies born in the U.S. each year.
Having a child born in the U.S. does not prevent the illegal alien mother or father from being deported. But this rarely occurs, especially for the illegal alien mother. Numbers USA reports that "In some cases, immigration judges make exceptions for the parents on the basis of their U.S.-born children and grant the parents legal status. In many cases, though, immigration officials choose not to initiate removal proceedings against illegal aliens with U.S.-born children, so they simply remain here illegally."
The real solution is for the illegal alien parents to return to their native countries with their children. That avoids the potential or theoretical problem of deportation.
Focusing on another such case, Dimitri Vassilaros of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review asks, "...is there even one American standing in the way of an alien family leaving intact to return to its country of origin? Deportation threatens unity only when a foreigner would rather be here illegally than back home preserving his family. Many Americans believe in traditional family values. It's too bad more illegals don't."
Illegal aliens have a child in the U.S., according to Professors Peter Schuck and Rogers Smith, because "The present guarantee under American law of automatic birthright citizenship to the children of illegal aliens can operate...as one more incentive to illegal migration and violation by nonimmigrant aliens already here [.] When this attraction is combined with the powerful lure of the expanded entitlements conferred upon citizen children and their families by the modern welfare state, the total incentive effect of birthright citizenship may well become significant."
Exploiting America
The provision is being used by people all over the world. According to Numbers USA, "Thousands of pregnant women who are about to deliver come to the United States each year from countries as far away as South Korea and as near as Mexico so that they can give birth on U.S. soil." These expectant mothers come either on legal travel visas or illegally across the border, but the purpose is always the same: "Once the child is born, they get a U.S. birth certificate and passport for the child, and their future link to this country is established and irreversible."
To compound this problem, those mothers who illegally enter the U.S. to have their anchor babies have little to no health insurance. But they will not be turned away from hospitals because the law requires that they be treated. All uninsured people, regardless of citizenship, receive medical care in hospital emergency rooms under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1985 (EMTALA). The act requires hospitals to treat any patient that enters an emergency room for "emergency care," which can include anything from a cough to drug addiction to a gunshot wound to depression to being HIV-positive. The Act requires emergency rooms to treat anyone that comes in, but does not require patients to pay for their care.
Instead, the costs are passed on to the American taxpayers and those with health insurance through rising premiums. Some hospitals can't afford the care for the illegals.
According to Marjorie Greenfield, MD, on the Dr. Spock website, in 2001 the average cost of having a baby in the U.S. ranged from $6,000 to $8,000 for a normal vaginal delivery and $10,000 to $12,000 for a cesarean birth. If the $8,000 cost is used for 2007 births, and all 380,000 babies born to illegal immigrants in the U.S. all had normal deliveries, this would cost hospitals around the country approximately $3 billion. But if there are 726,000 anchor babies born in the U.S. each year, the cost skyrockets to nearly $6 billion.
And if there are any complications with the pregnancy, or if the child is born prematurely and needs to be admitted into a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, the cost rises by tens of thousands of dollars.
Illegal alien mothers aren't the only ones benefiting. There are reports that some pregnant Mexicans are entering the U.S. for the sole purpose of giving birth and having the costs paid for by Americans. A survey conducted by the University of California found that of new Hispanic mothers in California border hospitals, 15 percent had crossed the border specifically to give birth.
Misinterpretation
It has been argued that the legal basis for birthright citizenships derives from the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Although the original intent of the 14th Amendment was to give former slaves citizenship after the Civil War including the right to due process, the Amendment has gone on to have far-reaching implications beyond the intent of the writers. The specific part that is being used to justify birthright citizenship comes from Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment which states, "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."
The question though is whether illegal aliens are "subject to the jurisdiction thereof." Illegal aliens do not have the right to vote in federal elections, do not have to register for the draft, and do not pay taxes, unlike American citizens, because they are foreign nationals living within the borders of the United States. However, supporters of birthright citizenship claim that the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States has no real meaning and is just another way of saying "born in the United States." For illegal alien supporters, they believe the Fourteenth Amendment requires that any child born on U.S. soil be granted U.S. citizenship.
However, as Numbers USA points out, scholars "have looked to the original Senate debate over the Fourteenth Amendment to determine its meaning. They conclude that the authors of the Fourteenth Amendment did NOT want to grant citizenship to every person who happened to be born on U.S. soil."
Numbers USA concludes that "The jurisdiction requirement was added to the original draft of the Fourteenth Amendment by the Senate after a lengthy and acrimonious debate. In fact, Senator Jacob Merritt Howard of Michigan proposed the addition of the phrase specifically because he wanted to make clear that the simple accident of birth in the United States was not sufficient to justify citizenship...Sen. Howard said that 'this will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.'"
Even though it is a misinterpretation of a Constitutional amendment passed almost 40 years ago, the Supreme Court has never decided the issue. According to Numbers USA, the closest the Supreme Court has come to ruling on the matter was "a case involving the U.S.-born child of lawful permanent residents in which, of course, it held the child to be a U.S. citizen." Therefore, without a ruling by the Supreme Court, or congressional action to end this practice, the status quo remains and anyone born on U.S. soil even though their mother is not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States will continue to be given citizenship.
Time for Action
The practice of birthright citizenship has been all but done away with in the industrial world. According to the New York Times, in June, 2004, Ireland, which was the last country in the European Union to still grant citizenship to anyone born in the country regardless of where the parents come from, overwhelmingly approved a plan to do away with a constitutional provision granting automatic Irish citizenship to any child born in Ireland. The United Kingdom, which has struggled with a growing Muslim and Southeast Asian population, ended birthright citizenship in 1981. Due to immigration pressures, it restricted birthright citizenship to requiring that one parent be a legal resident.
Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA) introduced H.R. 1940, the Birthright Citizenship Act of 2007, which would eliminate birthright citizenship for the children born to illegal aliens in the United States by limiting the granting of such citizenship to the children of: U.S. citizens or nationals; lawful permanent resident aliens residing in the United States; and aliens performing active service in the armed forces. On April 19, 2007 the bill was referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary. The bill has only 46 co-sponsors in the U.S. House, listed here.
No "reform" of the immigration system will be complete without the provisions of the Deal bill becoming law. But the media, led by the illegal alien-supporting Washington Post, will fight any such change every step of the way.
Andy Selepak, a writer at Accuracy in Media, is the author of the study, New Evidence of Liberal Media Bias, published as an AIM Report. He can be reached at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
21 Comments | Post a Comment
we are already a third world have you been to miami or south texas why are we still giving citizenship to foreigners with 20 million illegals and all having 4 to 5 children and amnesty aroung the corner with each undocumented want to reunite their families lets see 20 x at least 5 members to each person forget open the borders erase the plan for the wall forget american culture we are dead
Yeah, let them take their kids back to their home countries, right? That way they can get kidnapped and prostituted to AMERICAN TOURISTS as is often the case in some of those countries. Heck, if they’re lucky they might even get smuggled back into the US and sold to some rich pedophile.
Think about it.
Now, do you realize there is a reason some deported parents would rather be away from their AMERICAN children? The crime rate in some of these countries is unbeliveable.
Look at your children as if they had black hair and brown eyes for just a second. What WOULDN’T you do for your kids?
I may have taken a different stance on this a few years ago, but I’ve met enough white trash and have seen so many different places that I realized that there are no bad guys. Just people who won’t give up, and others who can’t learn to share. Honestly, you don’t know #### until you’ve seen the way some of these people live.
Look the US economic right now ( not good at all) There is more than $ 40, 340, 866, 575 ( US DOLLAR) flew to Mexico since 2006 till NOW. And it keeps growth about $1,500 every Second!! They rob this country indeed. While we have been giving them very big support for their family here ( Free baby delivery cost, free food/ milk/ medicine for their babIES)! Soon or later this country will be UNITED STATES of AMEXICO, but the point is not the name of the country, Will this country will have the same wealth/ well being in the future? ( soon). Most of them, has about 4 or five new born babies within 6/ 7 years period of time. They make a baby like a “machine”, to be honest nobody know exactly how many illegal mexican here. Because is no tool can count their total.
Operation Wetback No! Operation Go Back Yes! Sign Our Petition
Hi I am a former Army National Guard soldier and I have a petition at OperationGoBack.com, would your sign my petition? Can you also ask others you know to sign my petition too? I need 2 million legal American to sign my petition. We must reverse this illegal invasion of illegal people into our country!
Can you help me increase that Illegal Exodus…Back to Mexico to an even larger number by signing our petition to send back all illegal alien invaders from our country? Because The SPAM Group will take another bite at the apple of “American Citizenship by any means necessary and Legalize Our Illegals Agenda. (The SPAM Group means The Spanish People Advocacy Movement Group) They are pushing a “The Race” or La Raza” agenda which is against the well being of the legal American citizens. It has been proven that their MAIN agenda is to create through political manipulation and what I call “False Arguments of Illegal Immigration, create a DUAL SPANISH/ENGLISH speaking America. Our founders are turning over in their graves. We can not let this happen. “Now is the time for ALL GOOD MEN to come to the AID of this country!”
Soon Illegal Alien Invaders will be granted AMNESTY (legal) status by DEFAULT! Because Legal Americans DID NOTHING to stop them. Have you ever been summoned to court to answer a charge, but you didn’t show up to defend your self and make your case, so the other party WON BY YOUR DEFAULT? That’s what’s happening now in this country! In just a little while Illegal Alien Invaders will get;
· AMNESTY (Legal Status) By YOUR DEFAULT!
There is only one question that all legal Americans must answer, and answer now. This question is also the MANDATE for the next president of the United States. We must get ready to sit 2 Million plus signatures on his desk, with the answer to this question. Yes the number is high because this issue is that important, and we have 300 Million plus legal people in America:
· Should illegal alien invaders stay here illegally in America and gain LEGAL AMNESTY status by DEFAULT (American’s Inaction) or should they Go Back?
Sign our petition to send illegal alien invaders back, we need 2 Million
Legal Americans to step forth and sign our petition, then ask everyone
you know to sign and ask them to tell their friends and family to sign
our petition too, that means everyone on your contact list.
Why? Because absolutely no one is telling these illegal alien invaders
to Go Back to their country, so they SQUAT illegally in our neighborhoods!
To Sign the Go Back Petitions go here:
http://www.gopetition.com/online/22799.html
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/OperationGoBack
Website: http://OperationGoBack.com/
Sure Richie, let’s all sign the petition as long as you promise you will work the land and will wake up each and every morning at 4 to get to the fields!
It is ignorant people like you that are starting riots to deport illegal immigrants without giving them an option to do it the legal way. I understand we need to do something about our Immigration however your suggestion is simply stupid as it wouldn’t solve anything.
My father was in the airforce for 11 years, he served our country and I am a born US Citizen and proud to be one! and I pay my TAXES! I am also Mexican and can understand why “our” people would want to come to America to work! I’m surprised you think those “illegal alien invaders” come and do nothing when they are the ones that do most of the LABOR WORK in the US!
Wake up and smell the coffee, stop this racisim! And why just the “Mexicans”??? we have so many illegal immigrants that are not Mexican, they come from everywhere around the world! The Philipines, Cuba, you name it!
Again, our country needs to come up with a solution to solve this problem but don’t blind your self thinking that by getting rid of all illegals will solve the problem because it WON’T!
Your petition is not the answer to this problem and again, Mexicans shouldn’t be the only one’s being targeted!
there are 50/60 million illegal mexcrements in the usa. go to any walmart in any state.
the repubs sold out this country.
You are racists! None of you are “legal citizens” of America! The only true American citizens are the Native Americans!! We ALL immigrated to this country! I don’t know who you think you are, calling immigrants derogatory names (I’m sure you don’t even know the meaning of that word!)
And to talk about culture! Our culture is dead and has been for decades! Tell me what kind of culture is constant BUY,BUY, BUY? Tell me what kind of culture is listening to an ipod all day, playing video games all day, staring at computer monitors all day, and not knowing where Japan is on a fucking map!??? THAT is who YOU are! You racists pigs who think you are true American Citizens! You are a bunch of dolts and have no idea about the world or anything else besides your chevy trucks and your sky television! You have no identity as an American. You are scum and have no right to judge people in who come to the U.S. who are just trying to earn some money because the governments in their countries are corrupt. They don’t want to live among you motherfuckers and your stupidity, they just want to earn some money and return to their countries.
You are all STUPID RACISTS!
we white scum do not want to pay for illegal spic’s babies. the spics don’t give a #### about the usa , but only the free services they can get. it takes stupid greedy welfare mentality spics to bring babies, 3/5 to a family when this country is broke. look at mexifornia. Mexico doesn’t even care for it’s own. spics bring crime and debt to america.
#### ALL YOU SPICS. GET OUT. GO BACK TO YOUR SHITHOLE COUNTRY.
spics only bring crime and debt to america. their culture of living 10 to a house,illiteracy,large welfare families,etc is not wanted here,
time to deport the welfare spics.
too bad we can’t deport the niggers.
Get rid of all illegals including the brats they had here. I am so sick of our stupid government catering to them. Obama’s aunt has been in the country since 2002 illegally; get her butt out of here too. Ya think our idiot president will deport his aunt? He won’t do a darn thing about illegals because he is one himself and if he orders all them deported then he has to leave too! Get him out of here too. I won’t miss him one bit.
Hey there Sure, how many options do you think the Mexican government would give us if we invaded their country and took from them? ABSOLUTELY NONE! If you want to support all these lazy lying law breaking people that is fine with me but I am sick of seeing them get everything when legal born American citizens can’t get any help when they need it. The Mexicans are targeted because they are the ones who take and take from our government. Asian people come here and work, they don’t collect welfare etc like the Mexicans do.
And What!?; these lazy Mexicans could care less about you, they are just happy that they can get what they want out of hardworking taxpayers and laugh all the way to the bank at all of us idiots that let them take advantage of us.
It’s hard to see a mexican female under 25 that isn’t pregnant.
the welfare anchor baby payments might end soon.
Thanks for the post, really very informative post for all the readers.
we illegals thank the americans for supporting our families during this depression.
Wow. Somehow I’m not surprised that the people damning all the Mexicans to hell can’t use proper grammar or punctuation. As for this site’s claim of “balanced” and “accurate” reporting, there is a subtle twinge of redneck-ery. I do agree that there should be tougher immigration laws regarding automatic citizenship to U.S. born babies, but using derogatory terms doesn’t exactly add credence to your case. I mean the N-word? Jesus, what year is it?
I`m getting really annoyed with people crying “racist” just because some concerned americans want to cut back the number of spics.Do you overemotional bleedin hearts not realize the social and economic impact of all these spics? Being anti-migration is not about being racist or insensitive,its about recognizing the real reason why these spics are here and who,in both american and spic government,is to blame.Any country has the right to have effective migration policies in place.Look at what happens without them.Look at how the african niggers have displaced the white britons in the UK,its appalling.
just look how broke mexifornia is. yet the spics keep on pumping out more welfare babies. they don’t have a clue or give a damn that this whole country might go under.
remember the alamo.
May 14 at 2:28 pm | #1 | Link
This article is very informative and I’ve been saying these things in blogs I’ve written over the last few years, espcially to news orgainzations. I agree, the time for action is now and we need to not only address the enormous burden illegal aliens have on all of us, but the issue of birthrights and citizenship and anchor babies before the future of our children is eroded beyond repair and America turns into a third world country like Mexico.