Senators' desire to restrict birthright citizenship doesn't sit well with some in Valley

PHARR — Celia Hernandez, a U.S. citizen by birth, heard the term “anchor babies” for the first time Friday.

“I can’t think of how to translate it,” she said.

The Pharr resident said it was difficult trying to relate its meaning to her Spanish-speaking, immigrant mother.

“I just told her it’s when Mexicans use their children to help becoming a citizen,” said Hernandez, 22. “That’s not a good translation, either.”

Over the past couple weeks, the term has echoed around the halls of Congress and on national talk shows as several Republicans have pushed for hearings on a possible repeal of the 14th Amendment.

They say the amendment, which grants birthright citizenship to babies born on U.S. soil, provides an incentive to foreigners looking to use the children for their own futures.

“We have a whole new cottage industry that people of great wealth are coming here to have children, too, so that they can create a basis for anchoring themselves to citizenship,” U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., told reporters last week.

But Hernandez’s mother, Maria Hernandez, said she never considered her daughter an investment for citizenship.

Through her daughter’s translation, Maria Hernandez said she had no real plan when she illegally immigrated to South Texas more than 25 years ago. She is now a legal permanent U.S. resident.

"We wanted better schools, better jobs for our family," Maria Hernandez said. "(Celia and her younger brother) just happened because the family got bigger.

"I never use my children to be selfish," she said.

‘MORE THAN JUST A NUMBER’

Like most figures surrounding illegal immigration, officials cannot easily quantify exactly how many undocumented immigrants have U.S.-born children.

A recent study by the Pew Hispanic Center estimates that 4 million such children lived in America in 2008, an increase from 2.7 million in 2003.

In Texas, the state’s Health and Human Services Commission reports Medicaid paid for 63,466 births to non-citizens in 2009, well over the 44,609 similar births in 2001. In total, the state health commission has recorded over half a million of these births in that nine-year span.

That equates to a sizeable chunk of future voters who will rain tough repercussions on politicians looking to restrict birthright citizenship, said Vaughn Cox, programming development director for La Union del Pueblo Entero, a San Juan-based immigrant advocacy group.

“Republicans can count and they know Latino voters vote heavily for their opponents,” Cox said. “Very few of them will be supportive of the folks who did their damnedest to block citizenship.”

On the floor of Congress recently, U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tyler, aired his own concerns about “anchor babies.”

Citing an unnamed retired FBI agent, Gohmert reported that foreign terrorists plan to exploit the current system by getting pregnant women into this country, where they would give birth to babies that would have automatic U.S. citizenship.

“Then (the babies) would return back where they could be raised and coddled as future terrorists,” he said. “And then one day, 20, 30 years down the road, they can be sent in to help destroy our way of life.”

Cox criticized efforts to restrict birthright citizenship, which he said were Republicans’ efforts to sweep aside immigrants’ individual stories and motives while scoring political points amid recent anti-immigration sentiment.

“These children are more than just a number,” Cox said. “There are families and dreams on the line, and a few senators are grandstanding without knowing a single fact about them.”

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, has backed away from a repeal of the amendment.

Should members from both parties want to pursue the issue, he said, he would support committee hearings at least to air out the social and legal implications.

“We don’t need to amend the Constitution to secure the border and reform a broken immigration system,” Cornyn said. “I would hope that (committees) would hear from a diverse group of people, including legal scholars, advocacy groups, and ordinary citizens, including a lot of Texans.”

MANY HURDLES AHEAD

The legal obstacles for Republicans hoping to change the Constitution are high.

They would need to convince a two-thirds majority of the House and the Senate even before trying to get ratification in three-fourths of the states.

In addition, a repeal of birthright citizenship would lead to complications in health care policy — how would officials determine which babies qualified for U.S. citizenship?

“We can’t ask anything and don’t want to ask about citizenship,” said Molly MacMorris-Adix, programming director for Holy Family Services Birth Center, a pre- to postnatal care agency based in Weslaco.

“Women come from many places to receive our services,” she said. “I don’t know what the law would make us do to prove where they come from, but we shouldn’t be basing care on where the patient is from.”

Holy Family Services is not the only center in the Rio Grande Valley to perform births regardless of immigration status. In fact, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission lists six Valley hospitals among 20 that saw the most births to non-citizens paid by Medicaid in 2009.

Current legal restrictions prohibit those hospitals and health care providers from asking about patient citizenship and would present legislators with even more hurdles following a repeal of birthright citizenship.

Cox said legislators would have to determine when, if and how medical professionals, customs officials or state workers should handle births to non-citizens.

“Fortunately for us, it’s a difficult process,” he said about the legal hurdles facing proponents of the revision. “It’s really kind of a moot point.”

Whether the hearings go forward or not, the news of the senators’ talk left Maria Hernandez shaken.

She said she would begin telling relatives and friends who are undocumented to carefully consider their family plans.

“They are already scared to go to the hospital,” she said. “A kid shouldn’t be raised in that fear.”

____

Neal Morton covers education and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956)314-0896.