Letter: Outdated birthright laws need changing

Saturday, May 26, 2007 | 7:10 a.m.

The present attempts of Congress to address reserving America's wealth of jobs for U.S. citizens and legal residents deserve partial approval.

Those jobs are partially what attracts millions of illegal residents to risk everything to come here, and, as a retired U.S. Customs agent with 15 years of experience on the Mexican border, I believe effective enforcement is the key. Congress' efforts are a valid attempt to stop illegal entry by removing the reason they come here.

But a very significant percentage of female illegals continue to come here, not to work, but to take advantage of our antiquated birthright laws. They give birth in our hospital emergency rooms, at our expense, because of our liberal welfare system.

They know that it is illegal for this country to force a U.S.-born citizen to leave the country, forcing us to allow the mother residency as well. And, in most cases, our liberal welfare system (that's you and me) ends up taking care of their needs .

I am amazed at how this flagrant "Catch-22" situation continues to fly under the radar. It is so obviously a major issue, more costly to Americans than politicians or the media are willing to admit, and it is not being seriously discussed by our Congress .

An effective and permanent fix would be to amend our birthright law (as most countries do) to provide that children born in the U.S. are citizens of the mother's country unless one or both parents are legal residents, or citizens, of the U.S. We must also mandate that a DNA sample be provided at the time of birth in questionable cases to prevent fraudulent claims by the father.

I challenge our representatives to give deserved importance to this issue by adding major language to this bill in their attempt to pass a truly effective immigration law .

Frank Musaraca, Henderson