Birthright Citizenship Looms as Immigration Fight

Laura Gomez, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who is six months pregnant, said she came to the United States to find work.

By MARC LACEY
NYT

NOGALES, Ariz. — Of the 50 or so women bused to this border town on a recent morning to be deported back to Mexico, Inez Vasquez stood out. Eight months pregnant, she had tried to waddle north, even carrying scissors with her in case she gave birth in the desert and had to cut the umbilical cord.

“All I want is a better life,” she said after the Border Patrol discovered her hiding in the bushes on the Arizona side of the border with her husband, her young son and her very pronounced abdomen.

The next big immigration battle looming on the horizon centers on illegal immigrants’ offspring, who are granted automatic citizenship if born on American soil. Arguing for an end to the policy, long rooted in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, immigration hard-liners describe a wave of migrants like Ms. Vasquez stepping across the border in the advanced stages of pregnancy to drop what are dismissively called “anchor babies.”

The reality at this stretch of the border is more complex, with hospitals reporting some immigrants arriving to give birth in America but many of them with valid visas who have crossed the border legally to take advantage of better medical care. Some are even attracted by an electronic billboard on the Mexican side that advertises the services of an American doctor and says bluntly: “Do you want to have your baby in the U.S.?”

(More here.)