The Great Divide of Citizenship - Los Angeles Times

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The Great Divide of Citizenship
Illegal immigrants whose children are legal residents by birth fear seeing their families split up if some in Congress get their way.
By Anna Gorman, Times Staff Writer
May 7, 2006
Maria Flores trekked with her four children across mountains into the United States, planning to earn some quick money and go back home to Mexico City.
Seven years later, she is still here. Her fifth child, Brandon Rodriguez, was born in the U.S., making him a citizen.
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So for Flores, the question of whether Congress loosens or strengthens immigration laws, whether it puts undocumented workers on a path to citizenship or deportation, is not so much political as deeply personal.
That‘s why she skipped work and kept her children out of school Monday to march for immigrant rights: She dreads seeing her family split up. She wants all of them to share equally in what the U.S. has to offer.
"We‘re planning a future for our children, but [politicians] are planning another future," said Flores, 31, a housekeeper who lives in Los Angeles. "They are deciding our lives."
Flores‘ family is among tens of thousands of mixed nationality in the region with huge emotional stakes in the congressional debate over illegal immigration. In many cases, parents are worried about being separated from their U.S.-born children or being forced to return, with them, to Mexico.
They are hoping for legalization but fearful of arrest.
"In a lot of ways, the mixed-status families have the most at stake," said Randy Capps, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan research organization. "They realize how much they have been affected, and could be affected, by this."
Nearly two-thirds — an estimated 3 million — of all children of illegal immigrants are citizens, according to data compiled by the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research group.
"People think ‘legals‘ live in this house and ‘illegals‘ live in this house," said immigration attorney Carl Shusterman. "It‘s not usually that simple."
Families of mixed status have long lived with the threat of being divided, prompting undocumented parents to make strategic decisions about where to live, work and travel. But in recent months, as Congress has been wrestling with immigration issues, their anxiety level has risen.
A House bill passed in December would make illegal immigrants felons, while a Senate proposal would create a path toward residency and eventual citizenship. Another proposal being floated in the Senate would limit the possibility of legal status to illegals who had married U.S. citizens, had U.S. citizen children or had otherwise put down "deep roots" in the U.S. A group of Republican legislators has introduced a bill that would no longer grant birthright citizenship to children born to illegal immigrants.
Flores said she has spent the last seven years building a life and a home for her and her children. All of that now hangs in the balance.
"If the government decides tomorrow we are criminals, we are going to lose everything," she said. "We are going to be sent home how we arrived, with nothing, only the great pain that we lost so much time."
Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Virginia Kice said the agency should not be blamed for splitting parents and children.
"These families made decisions, often years ago, that put the unity of their families at risk," she said. "The fact that someone has a U.S.-citizen child does not change the fact that they are here illegally."
Many opponents of illegal immigration say such people shouldn‘t be allowed to stay in the U.S. just because their children were born here. Some groups call the children "anchor babies," because they sometimes are used to fight their parents‘ deportation and, when the children turn 21, they can petition for their parents to become legal residents.
"The presence of citizen children is not by itself sufficient reason for them to stay," said Steve Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. "If you do that, you convey to everyone who has played by the rules and waited that they are dupes."
Diana Hull, who runs Californians for Population Stabilization, said illegal immigrants give birth here to stake a claim in the country.
"Of course this is a magnet," she said. "They come here obviously, deliberately to have a citizen child."
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