“Crack down on birth tourism operators” [Opinion, March 15] by Joseph Perkins points out how birth tourism has been going on for years and years. He notes that when the Carlyle Apartments were raided, a doctor was confronted and said, “I don’t know what the big deal is, Mexican women come to this country to have babies all the time.”googleoff: all
I can attest from personal experience from the late ’70s and early ’80s, when I spent a lot of time at my company’s plant in Mexico. The first warehouse manager I helped train made no excuses for sending his wife across the border to Laredo, Texas to have all his children born.googleoff: all
How has this been allowed to happen for so long? The Fourteenth Amendment was written nearly 150 years ago to ensure that the recently freed slaves would be assured of citizenship. Although immigration was encouraged, the intent was that those that did so intended to stay and become citizens.googleoff: all
In my opinion, if neither parent is an American, automatic citizenship should not be granted to that child unless the mother has been issued a permanent visa and resided in this country for at least a full year before the child’s birth. But of course members of Congress don’t have the guts to consider an issue that’s not “politically correct.”