Ask the Expert: Let's Fix Immigration, Not Attack Immigrant Mothers

Why do some conservatives want to deny birthright citizenship to the children of some immigrants?

Sadly, we are at a point in our nation's history where we are very down on ethnic and race relations, and conservative immigration hardliners would like to do away not only with illegal immigrants, which we all want to do, but also to do away with legal immigration, and in this case change the Constitution so we would deny birthright citizenship to the children born to undocumented immigrant mothers.

The problem with that is that it changes the Constitution. This is a basic, fundamental right that was guaranteed to all citizens of the United States if they were born here. The framers of the Constitution installed that provision back after the Civil War because they wanted to guarantee that the children of slaves would be given citizenship status. Now we are at a point in our country where we have a growing immigrant population. And unfortunately, that makes some extremists uncomfortable, but immigrants are what make this county great, and citizenship rights are well deserved to the children of immigrants.

What are the major legal and administrative hurdles they are likely to run up against?

It is very difficult to change or amend the Constitution. In fact, it requires a constitutional amendment. This is not like going to Capitol Hill and passing an act of Congress. You actually have to get supermajorities in the House and Senate, or you have to get two-thirds of the state legislatures just to propose the amendment. And then, you have to go through the process of ratifying it, and that requires three-fourths of the states to pass it. So clearly, the framers of the Constitution wanted this to be a difficult process. They put it as an amendment to the Constitution because they didn't want it to be changed based on the political whims of the day.

Why would denying citizenship to these children not fix our immigration problems?

This proposal does not fix our immigration problems because we are in a situation where we need comprehensive immigration reform, not to be attacking the Constitution. First of all, if this were passed, you would not be able to document citizen children with great ease. You would be making nurses and doctors and hospital administrators into immigration enforcers. Secondly, you wouldn't be reducing undocumented immigration. In fact, you would probably be increasing it. Let's keep in mind that mothers don't always go to hospitals and doctors. Some of them, as back in our early years, are served by midwives. And there's no way to properly account sometimes who comes in to give birth, or who is born here when they know that federal agents are looking for them. It's just not practical.

The bottom line is that we do need comprehensive immigration reform. People are complaining about undocumented immigration, and that's what we need to fix. We don't' need to be attacking the children of immigrants.