On Wednesday, the Today Show NBC's Natalie Morales introduced Telemundo's Maria Celeste Arraras to tell the story of a South Florida family that has been separated by immigration laws. It is the tale of a Colombian mother deported back to her home country because, like 40% of the illegal aliens in the U.S, she overstayed her visa. Many people will say to the children, “Well, this is a very sad case but too bad, your mother was not a citizen and should not have come here in the first place. Moreover, your mother chose to leave you behind or you chose not to accompany her. So whose fault is this? Since she wasn’t a citizen she should not have been here and, in some sense, neither should you, even though the 14th amendment gives you that right if you were born here.
In the U.S., one of the strongest incentives for border violations is the 14th amendment which grants citizenship to anyone who is born in this country.
It is difficult to imagine a more irrational and self-defeating legal system than one which makes unauthorized entry into this country a criminal offense and simultaneously provides perhaps the greatest possible inducement to illegal entry
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Originally, the 14th amendment was designed to give full citizenship status to former slaves and their offspring. The authors of the 14th Amendment never would have imagined their words bestowing citizenship to the offspring of illegal aliens, tourists, foreign students, or temporary farm workers.
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