Citizenship & Solomon

My friend Andres posted a link on Facebook (http://www.kansascity.com/2011/01/29/2619499/children-of-illegal-immigrants.html) about a little boy born of an illegal immigrant in Missouri.   

His mother came from Guatemala in order to find work to support her two children & her unborn son.  Arrested in a raid on a Missouri poultry plant, her seven month old son Carlos was taken into protective custody & eventually went to live with a childless American couple.   

While his mother was still in jail, Carlos/Jamison’s (depending on which mommy is speaking of him), foster parents filed adoption papers.

The papers severing his Guatemalan rights, served on her in jail, were in English.  She only speaks Spanish.  

 Clever little trick that smacks of something that should never take place in this country filled with languages & translators from around the globe.  Not in this day.  Not under our watch.

Carlos/Jamison is loved by two families & has apparently thrived with his adoptive parents.  His Guatemalan mother & family love him & grieve over his absence from their lives & want him returned.

A case for Solomon.

In light of the backlash against immigrants & a move by anglophiles to deny children of illegal immigrants, born on US soil, the rights & responsibilities of citizenship,  the story got me to thinking (always a dangerous turn of events).

So I went to the Internet source for instant answers to all questions, Wikipedia, & read about US Nationality Law.

A bit more complicated than one is taught in school.

I learned that had I given birth to my son Nick while living overseas for a year or more, he would not be a US citizen.  Because he was born out of wedlock

.

Nick’s father is French, worked here legally & paid US taxes for decades.  He still owns a home here.

Reading the law, I am not sure that even my son Sam would have been a citizen under some circumstances.  

Sam’s father is a US citizen.  However, if we had both been living outside the US for a specified period of time, unmarried, without owning a residence in the US, I cannot ascertain from reading the statutes that citizenship for Sam could be taken as a given.

Like all law, the rules of citizenship are complicated – wedlock vs. out of wedlock (one set of rules if the out of wedlock parent is the mother & a separate set if the parent is the father).  

Luckily for both Nick & Sam, they were born here to at least one if not two US citizens & wedlock was not an issue.  Except, perhaps, emotionally, for each of them.

In my reading, I find nothing that guarantees the children born on US soil, of illegal immigrants, are automatically granted citizenship.  I also don’t find anything forbidding it.  

While I realize that Wikipedia is not the ultimate source of information, or even the most accurate source, I know that this omission addressing the children of illegal immigrants is driving the fight to reverse what has been unspoken & undefined policy for decades.

I want to know how many children born on US soil throughout our country’s history, whose parents were here illegally, or were not US citizens, have gone on to be productive & amazing participants in this democracy?

In the coming months, we are going to need the Wisdom of Solomon.