“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 undocumented 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.?”
As for women like Ms. Vasquez, who was preparing for a desert delivery, they are rare.
Still, Arizona — whose tough law granting the police the power to detain undocumented immigrants is tied up in the courts — may again take the lead in what is essentially an attempt to redefine what it means to be an American. This time, though, Arizona lawmakers intend to join with legislators from several other states to force the issue before the Supreme Court.
This coalition of lawmakers will unveil its exact plans on Wednesday in Washington, but people involved in drafting the legislation say they have decided against the painstaking process of amending the Constitution and may instead unilaterally restrict the issuing of birth certificates to undocumented immigrants’ children in their states. They know a flurry of lawsuits will follow and hope the resulting legal conflict will be resolved in their favor.
“This is not a far-out, extremist position,” said John Kavanagh, one of the Arizona legislators who is leading an effort that has been called just that. “Only a handful of countries in the world grant citizenship based on the G.P.S. location of the birth.”
Most Constitutional scholars consider the states’ effort to restrict birth certificates patently unconstitutional. “This is political theater, not a serious effort to create a legal test,” said Gabriel J. Chin, a law professor at the University of Arizona whose grandfather immigrated to the United States from China at a time when ethnic Chinese were excluded from the country. “It strikes me as unwise, un-American and unconstitutional.”
The 14th Amendment, adopted in 1868, was a repudiation of the Supreme Court’s 1857 ruling, in Dred Scott v. Sandford, that people of African descent could never be American citizens. The amendment said citizenship applied to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
In 1898 the Supreme Court, in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, interpreted the citizenship provision as applying to a child born in the United States to a Chinese immigrant couple.
Still, some conservatives contend the issue is unsettled. Kris Kobach, the incoming secretary of state in Kansas and a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City who has helped draft many of the tough immigration regulations across the country, argued the approach the states were planning would hold up to scrutiny. “I can’t really say much more without showing my hand,” he said in an e-mail. “But yes, I am confident the law will stand up in court.”
Despite being called “anchor babies,” the children of undocumented immigrants born in the United States cannot actually prevent their parents from being deported. It is not until they reach the age of 21 the children are able to file paperwork to sponsor their parents for citizenship. The parents remain vulnerable until that point.
Maria Ledezma knows as much. Just off a bus that deported her from Phoenix to the Mexico border town of Nogales, she was sobbing as she explained the series of events that led her to be separated from her three daughters, ages 4, 7 and 9, all American citizens. “I never imagined being here,” said Ms. Ledezma, 25, who was brought to Phoenix from Mexico as a toddler. “I’ll bet right now my girls are asking, ‘Where’s mom?’ ”
Blended families like hers are a reality across the United States. A study released in August by the Pew Hispanic Center found about 340,000 children were born to undocumented immigrants in the United States in 2008 and became instant citizens.
In April, Representative Duncan Hunter, Republican of California, one of those pushing for Congressional action on the citizenship issue, stirred controversy when he suggested children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants should be deported with their parents until the birthright citizenship policy is changed. “And we’re not being mean,” he told a Tea Party rally in Southern California. “We’re just saying it takes more than walking across the border to become an American citizen. It’s what’s in our souls.”
Immigrant advocates say intolerance is driving the measure. “They call themselves patriots, but they pick and choose which parts of the Constitution they support,” said a number of Hispanic activists in Tucson. “They’re fear-mongerers. They’re clowns.”
Like many states, Arizona is suffering a severe budget crisis, prompting even some lawmakers who have supported immigration restrictions in the past to question whether it is the right time for another divisive immigration bill. They say the state’s fiscal issues need to be resolved before Arizona jumps back into a controversial immigration debate.
“I was born and raised in New York,” responded Mr. Kavanagh, a Queens native who is chairman of the Appropriations Committee of the Arizona House. “I can ride a subway, drink coffee, read the newspaper and make sure my pockets are not picked all at the same time.”
Scholars who have studied migration over the years say it is the desire for better-paying jobs, not a passport for their children, that is the primary motivator for people to leave their homes for the United States. Even Ms. Vasquez, who was preparing for a desert delivery, agrees with that.
All things being equal, she would have preferred her child be born in the United States, she said, but it was the prospect of a better economic future, with or without papers, that prompted her and her family to cross.
“I’ll try again — but once the baby’s born,” she said.
