If a child is born to an illegal immigrant couple,living in the USA, is not that child an American Citizen.?
Answer:
a child's citizenship depends on where the child is born, it does NOT depend on whether the child's parents are legal residents or citizens of that country.
The answer to your question is Yes, AKA an anchor baby. One of the things the writers of our constitution didn't see coming, but something we must now deal with.
Children born in the United States (including not only the 50 states and the District of Columbia, but also, in most cases, U.S. Territories, such as Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Panama Canal Zone before it was returned to Panama, in addition to many current states which were territories at the time of the birth of some individuals now living, e.g. Alaska and Hawaii), are U.S. citizens at birth (unless born to foreign diplomatic staff), regardless of the citizenship or nationality of the parents. This has become controversial, as some non-resident parents, especially illegal aliens, enter the United States to give birth, so that their children, often called anchor babies, will be U.S. citizens. A birth certificate is considered evidence of citizenship.
The U.S. citizenship status of children born in the United States to non-citizen parents has been generally accepted as settled law since 1898, when the Supreme Court held in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark that almost all such children were entitled to citizenship by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Although efforts have been made in Congress, from time to time, to overturn the Wong Kim Ark ruling or limit its effect, via either a new amendment to the Constitution or ordinary legislation, no such attempt has ever succeeded.
Yes, and I know they use to giv the mother status to live in the United States. I don't know if that is true anymore, but some pregnant women would purposly come accross while they were pregnant, then go to a hospital to have their babies.
Yes. Any child born on US soil automatically has US citizenship, regardless of the parent's citizenship status or nation of origin. This does not mean the child has no other citizenship elsewhere.
If the baby is born here, he/she would be an American citizen. The baby will have an United States birth certificate and a social security number. He/she will grow here, go to school, speak english and as an adult will work and pay taxes, just as many children born from illegal couples did and still do today.
yes!
An estimated 300,000 anchor babies are born in the US each year. This alone exceeds the total number of immigrants coming to the US each year before 1965.
The 14th amendment was not written with the idea of anchor babies in mind. There is also a law that says the parents are still subject to the laws in their former country.
This law has resulted in the interpretation that parents can still be deported.
So the answer is Yes, but unless the constitution is amended to modernize the verbiage this will continue to be a gray area.
Yes. The "sins of our fathers" don't relate.
For the record, I'm not ashamed to disagree with that law, I just have to respect it. I hold nothing against an innocent child. But if the parents are found to be here illegally, they should be deported. No one is making the kid stay and no one is going to deport him because he's a citizen. He has the right to stay, they don't. I don't see why he wouldn't go with the family voluntarily. The US wouldn't be "breaking up a family" if the parents are deported...the family would be breaking up the family if they didn't take the child with them. He can some back anytime he wants, work, go to school, whatever. As for his opportunities being different, well, I could have had a better life if my parents had money. But they didn't. That's life and as a child, your opportunities might be limited by your parent's situation. Even if you're American.
If you want, go ahead and give me a thumbs down for having an opinion. I'm not the only one who feels that way.
Yes and the parents will become permanent residents if they apply when the child is 21.
Yes, it's according to the 14th amendment ot the constitution, and it was intended to clarify the citizenship status of slaves after the Civil War. Today, it is one of the ways our government encourages immigration.
Many citizens want to change this law which encourages women to come here from all over the world to have their babies here at the expense of the US health care system, but getting our representatives to act is very difficult.
Yes due to misinterpretation of the 14th amendment
Yes. The way the law is set up, anyone born on American soil is an American citizen. That is not the way it is in most countries. We need to fix that, don't we?
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