Picture this: You are a United States Marine currently stationed in Okinawa, Japan. The child of parents who illegally entered the United States two years before your birth, you grew up knowing that there was always a chance that your family would find themselves facing deportation. Despite this fear, your childhood was a happy one, your parents worked multiple jobs and made sure that you had everything you needed. You did well in school and your parents encouraged you to embrace the American culture. While you learned Spanish from them, your parents were strict about your use of English outside of your home.
When you met with your recruiter for the first time, you did so without the knowledge of your parents, not because you feared they would not approve, but because you feared that your recruiter might report your parents to immigration services. Thankfully your concerns proved to be unnecessary as your recruiter welcomed your parents as members of his own family and made sure they understood the process that you would be going through as you earned the title of United States Marine. You remember the tearful goodbyes on the day you left for bootcamp and the disappointment you had at graduation because your parents could not be there. Instead, it was your recruiter who was there in their stead, iPhone in hand, Facetiming with your family so that they could watch from home.
US Citizen children are only able to sponsor their parents for a green card once they hit the age of 21, and even then, their parents must meet a very high bar of character requirements to be granted a green card.
Your parents’ absence from your graduation was not because of a lack of desire or money, instead it was because of their status as undocumented immigrants. They could not risk traveling to southern California, much less entering a federal military base, because they could get arrested and deported.
You know your parents are proud of you, and they are so happy that you are traveling the world, seeing, and experiencing things that they never could. Today, though, your life has been rocked to its core and being in a different country only makes the news you just received that much harder to stomach. Today you got a phone call from your baby sister: your dad was stopped by state troopers on his way home from work because of a broken tail light, instead of giving him a fix-it-ticket like every other American citizen, your father was arrested and was currently waiting in jail, and will be deported as soon as the government can process him, something that could be as quick as tomorrow and as long as several years. The nation that you are serving is going to rip your family apart, simply because your father is undocumented and didn’t know his taillight was broken.
This is a scenario that has a great deal of reality behind it, the fact of the matter is that scenarios just like it play out on a daily basis. The problem is that it is all too easy to overlook the human element of the issues involving immigration. The human element is what we as Americans must remember when we are discussing such divisive issues like immigration. One part of the human element of US Immigration Policy centers around something that many Americans take for granted: birth right citizenship.
Undocumented parents of children born in the United States are still subject to detain and deport policies.
The United States is one of 35 nations that grant citizenship to all people born within its borders regardless of parental citizenship. Citizenship by birth is a pro-immigration policy that has been the general law of the land for most nations in the America’s since the days of colonization. Recently, this policy has come under scrutiny as immigration opponents point to what they term “anchor babies” as evidence of abuse of US Immigration law by undocumented immigrants to gain access to the United States.
The term originally showed up in print in 1996 but did not become mainstream until the mid 2000’s. Based on the idea that parents intentionally planned their migration to the United States to coincide with the birth of their child, ensuring their child was born on US soil and increasing the time by which an undocumented immigrant could remain in the US and not be deported. This idea has no basis in legal fact, an undocumented parent of a child born in the United States is still subject to detain and deport policies and such actions have taken place with an estimated 500,000 US Citizen children under the age of 18 experiencing the deportation of at least one undocumented parent between 2011 and 2013.
An estimated 500,000 US Citizen children under the age of 18 experiencing the deportation of at least one undocumented parent between 2011 and 2013.
US Citizen children are only able to sponsor their parents for a green card once they hit the age of 21, and even then, their parents must meet a very high bar of character requirements to be granted a green card. Tying in the opening scenario for this article, a US Citizen can enlist in the United States military as young as 17 meaning that the Marine we followed would have likely not been old enough to have sponsored their father for a green card despite being old enough to serve.
As of 2018, roughly 4.4 million US Citizen children under the age of 18 lived with at least one undocumented parent, with 6.1 million US Citizen children under the age of 18 living in the same household as an undocumented immigrant family member. With census data indicating that 21% of households with undocumented family members currently live below the poverty level, the loss of even one parent to deportation can be truly detrimental to the US citizen child or children living in that home. Let me clarify: removing just one family member from a home in which all members are needed in order to contribute to the financial stability of the family unit is far more likely to have negative second and third order effects both on the child/children as well as American society as a whole.
There are alternatives to birthright citizenship, and many opponents to the policy make arguments that eliminating guaranteed citizenship for all children born on US soil would alleviate the issues posed above. The primary solution or alteration to the birthright citizenship policy would be to adopt a policy of “jus sanguinis” or citizenship that is based on the lineage of the child. Essentially, instead of being guaranteed citizenship on account of being born here in the United States, a child could only become a citizen if one or both parents were citizens.
On its face, this seems like a perfect alternative, especially given that every other nation besides the group of thirty five that the United States is part of today, adheres to a variation of the “jus sanguines” policy. The problem arises when discussing how to enact such a change. Do we simply back date the change and declare that anyone who does not have a clear family lineage as not a citizen, or do we set an arbitrary date by which birth right citizenship would simply cease to be the law of the land for the United States. What would happen to children born to undocumented immigrants here in the United States? How would such an action affect infant and maternal mortality rates for undocumented immigrants? The human element does not simply disappear with a change of policy.
No matter what side of the aisle you land on, the issue of immigration is a human issue, and as such the human element needs to be considered. The biggest question that we should all consider when discussing changes to policy that has existed as long as the United States has been a nation, a policy that was cemented into our legal system following the adoption of the 14th amendment, is why. Why do we need to change our policy? Is the issue really about the false notion that “anchor babies” are used to prevent undocumented immigrants from being deported? Is the need for change driven by something more in tune with the reality of the story of US Immigration Policy? Perhaps there is a xenophobic element tied to the desire to make it harder to become a citizen of the “shining city on a hill.”
Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share this article, and keep an eye out for the next installment on the Crayon Box Politics deep dive into the issue of immigration. Got something to add to the conversation, please comment below and lets continue to color outside the political lines together.
Solid topic coverage, did not feel leading or on a particular side while I read. Multitude of inserts backing up statements was not overwhelming but I could not find any citing to the study's or publisher of those inserts. Most importantly the pictures kept me calm while I pretended to be able to read.