Illegal immigrants who commited violent crimes and have U.S. Citizen - Essay Example

America's “Birth Right citizenship” rule is protected by the Fourteenth Amendment and has turn illegal immigration not only into a gray area, but a sad one for those illegal immigrant status parents who are forcibly separated from their children who are then placed in the foster care system. From January to June of 2011, more than 46,000 parents with illegal immigrant status were deported by ICE with 21,860 parents asked to leave the country but leave their children as well. These parents are mostly illegals who have violent crime convictions as the government has chosen to concentrate on the the reasons for deportation rather than just simply basing the deportation on not having legal documents to be residing in the United States(Gonzales, “Report: 22% of Deportees Have U.S. Born Children”).

One must point out that the Obama administration has been the most compassionate when addressing the issue of illegal immigrant parent status for the American born children. According to Gonzales (“ “Report: 22% of Deportees Have U.S. Born Children”): ICE statistics show that 74% of the 46,486 parents of U.S.-citizen children deported had been convicted of crimes. Another 13% had been previously removed from the country, and 4% were fugitives — immigrants who failed to comply with deportation orders.

As proven by the aforementioned statistics, selective deportation may be the key to controlling our illegal immigrant problem in terms of those having U.S. born children. It is an acknowledged fact that being born on U.S. soil does not automatically bestow citizenship on the parents of the child. But it does so for the child and by deporting the parents and keeping the child on U.S. soil, our government has a hand in one of the most inhuman and cruel acts that can be committed by an individual.

That of separating a parent from a child and breaking up a family. Further complicating the situation, is the fact that the Fourteenth Amendment, which was drafted after the Civil War in order to ensure that the citizenship of freed slaves and their descendants would be protected. The “birth right” law has not seen even an iota of amending since it was conceived and thus serves the purpose of the illegal immigrants whose children are born in the United States. This is because the law was enacted during the time when the United States still had vast resources in terms of land, food, water, etc.

, and thus had unregulated immigration. Since our government has kept that law intact to this very day, then the government has no right to deport illegal immigrant status parents from the country (“Should Birth Right Citizenship Be Denied for U.S. Born Children of Illegal Immigrants?”). This unamendended law has become the basis of heartlessness within our government in terms of dealing with illegal immigrant status parents. In fact, it was U.S. Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif who said that the report on the statistics pertaining to the illegal immigrant parent removals shows: “.

the terrible toll our broken immigration system is taking on families.We can't continue to claim to value families while deporting parents in the tens of thousands.” (Gonzales, “Stats Detail Deportation of Parents”). The problems posed by the situation are clear to all those concerned. The real question is, “