Latino advocacy groups are pushing back against a presidential proposal to end granting United States citizenship for American-born children of undocumented immigrants.
The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution 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.”
A 2016 report by the Pew Research Center found that 275,000 babies born to undocumented immigrant parents in 2014 received U.S. citizenship. That was about 7 percent of all-American births, a decrease from 9 percent in 2006 when Pew estimated 370,000 children received citizenship.
Mary Jose Espinoza is the oldest of four sisters in her family who are all American citizens born to Mexican parents. Espinoza’s parents crossed the border into California around 1990. She was born July 4, 1994. The family moved to North Carolina in 2005.
“I was born here and I’m still under attack, I think that it also is (applicable) for future generations, like what does it mean if someone was undocumented now or having a baby, or if someone is DACA and having a baby? Just knowing that there’s this constant attack on immigrant families and their children,” she said.
Espinoza works as a civic engagement organizer for El Pueblo, Inc., a Raleigh-based Latino leadership development and advocacy organization. El Pueblo Communications Coordinator William Saenz said the president’s proposal is a political tactic ahead of the midterm elections. Saenz said the announcement is also not fully explained as to how it would be applied.
“To kind of leave this open-ended possibility out there, in our opinion, really was kind of meant to stimulate or further create anti-immigrant sentiments within our country, particularly what we’ve seen with the refugees that are coming from Central America right now,” Saenz said.
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