Lux Lucet

Birthright Citizenship: A Magnet for Illegal Immigration

In his campaign’s press release, Trump promised “On Day One, President Trump will sign an Executive Order to stop federal agencies from granting automatic U.S. citizenship to the children of illegal aliens.”  This statement provides a good basis for a definition of the problem of BRC as it is currently practiced in the United States. 

Under the current interpretation of the 14^th Amendment, the children of illegal aliens born in the United States are granted American citizenship automatically, without any regard to the citizenship status of the parents. 

This creates several problems.  One of the perverse incentives to come from America’s current practice of BRC is that illegal alien parents are almost impossible to deport once they have American citizen children.  This is why their American-born, American citizenship-holding children are referred to as Anchor Babies.  These children serve as an anchor for the illegal alien parents to remain in the United States.  Let me illustrate this point with a local story.

Back in 2017, the Cincinnati papers were filled with the sad story of Maribel Trujillo Diaz, a Mexican illegal alien who lost her final court case to remain in the United States and was set to be deported.  The local weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth was led by, you probably guessed it, the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, with the press acting as their megaphone. 

Maribel Trujillo Diaz, we were told, was a noble person with the noblest of intentions and was being sore persecuted and threatened with deportation for no reason whatsoever.  Perhaps the best headline out of many that I read on her case was this one, “ICE Set to Deort Law-abiding Mother of Children with Special Needs Who Escaped Mexican Cartels.” 

In the article, which appears no longer to be available online, we read “‘Ms. (sic) Trujillo doesn’t present a threat to public safety,’ Kersh [Mrs. Trujillo’s lawyer] said in a press release. ‘She has lived here peacefully since 2002 with no criminal record. All these efforts to detain and remove her draw a big question mark over President Trump’s immigration strategy – this is not making America safer, it’s leaving four American kids without their mom.’”

A few thoughts on this.  First, Mrs. Trujillo violated American immigration law by illegally entering this nation in 2022.  For this reason, it is dishonest to represent her as having no criminal record.  According to this article from a law firm, “Yes, unlawful entry [into the United States] is a felony.” There is no doubt that Mrs. Trujillo did, in fact, violate American immigration law by unlawfully entering the United States in 2002, so it is ridiculous to say, as her lawyer does that she “has no criminal record” or refer to her, as does the headline as “Law-abiding.” 

Second, according to her lawyer, Mrs. Trujillo is the mother of “four American kids.” Apparently, her children were born after she illegally immigrated to the United States, meaning that her children are anchor babies. That is, they received their American citizenship as a result of the current misinterpretation of the 14^th Amendment.  Thus, we get the emotional appeal from the lawyer saying that “Trump’s immigration strategy…[is] leaving four American kids without their mom.”

The hue and cry about “separated families” is a dodge apparently originating with the Roman Catholic Church-State and is often presented as an excuse not to enforce American immigration law, even on those such as Mrs. Trujillo who very clearly was in violation of it. For example, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishop’s evil 2003 paper titled “Strangers No Longer: Together on the Journey of Hope” invokes the “separated families” idea a number of times, whining about “the unjust separation of untold numbers of immigrant families” that occur due to deportation.  But these deportees are not immigrants, as the USCCB dishonestly styles them, they are illegal aliens.  And there is nothing unjust about the separation, which can always be ended by the family in America rejoining their loved one in the country of his origin.    

Third, as a result of the current misinterpretation of the 14^th Amendment, her “special needs children,” are presumably having their special needs paid for by American taxpayers who have no say in the matter at all.  Their job is simply to fork over the money and shut up. 

We can see in the case of Mrs. Trujillo the magnet effect of our current practice of giving birthright citizenship to the children of illegal aliens. First, it encourages them to come to the US and remain here in violation of our immigration laws. Second, it provides them with the option of making the claim that they are the parents of American children making deportation more difficult.  After all, who’s going to look after their American children once they are deported?  Third, we see the hand of the Roman Catholic Church-State in all this as they delight in making emotional appeals based on the “separation of families” to fool people into supporting Rome’s nation-destroying immigration policies.    

In the opinion of this author, there is no single action that could do more to help America get control of its borders than reforming BRC to exclude children born to illegal aliens and to limit its application to the children of at least one American citizen (Trump’s proposal includes the children of at least one lawful permanent resident). 

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