[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9348-9349]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     OUTLAW BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, CBS News recently ran an expose on the 
growing phenomenon of illegal aliens entering the United States in 
order to give birth to a child. The segment shed some light on what has 
become an increasingly costly burden to the United States taxpayer.
  An estimated 300,000 children of illegal aliens are born in this 
country every year, largely because of a misguided policy of so-called 
``birthright citizenship.'' This peculiar policy confers U.S. 
citizenship on any child born here regardless of what country their 
parents are from or whether those parents are here in the United States 
legally. We are one of few--in fact, we may be the only country now 
that still provides for this particular kind of citizenship.
  And it's based on a very strange sort of interpretation of the 14th 
amendment, one part of the 14th amendment in particular. We all 
recognize of course that when the 14th amendment was written there was 
no such thing as illegal immigration. Certainly, there could have been 
no reference to it in the amendment itself. And what we need to do, 
frankly, is to pass legislation in this House and in the Senate, and 
the President needs to sign it, outlawing this practice and this habit, 
really, that we have gotten into, which is more than anything else a 
phenomenon of custom more than it is of actual law or analysis of the 
legal system or the Constitution of the United States. We should pass 
legislation to outlaw it and let it be tested at the Supreme Court. It 
results not just in the benefit for a child who is born as a U.S. 
citizen, it also makes it easier for the parent of that anchor baby or 
the illegal alien to become a U.S. citizen through that child.
  The story on CBS focused on one woman who had crossed over the Rio 
Grande with her husband and two other children to give birth in the 
United States. She gave birth to a healthy 8\1/2\ pound baby on 
American soil after American doctors performed a C-section, a procedure 
that carries a price tag of nearly $5,000, a bill that was sent to the 
American taxpayer.
  Joe Riley, the CEO of the McAllen Texas Medical Center near the 
Texas-Mexico border, said this sort of thing is quite typical. He told 
CBS news that he

[[Page 9349]]

had seen ``mothers about to give birth that walk up to the hospital 
still wet from swimming across the river in actual labor, dirty, wet, 
cold, here to have a child in the United States.''
  Mr. Riley's hospital alone is forced to provide uncompensated care 
worth more than $200 million each to cover the cost of nearly the 3,000 
illegal alien births that take place there annually. Even more 
startling, that equates to about 50 percent of all the births in that 
hospital, meaning doctors are delivering almost as many children for 
illegal aliens as they are for American mothers. In California alone, 
by the way, the cost for illegal alien health care, not just for the 
births of illegal alien children, but the cost of health care for 
illegal aliens is over $1 billion a year; one State, over $1 billion a 
year.
  With statistics like that, Mr. Speaker, it should come as no surprise 
that many American hospitals are on the verge of collapse--some, in 
fact, have gone that way--and that billions of taxpayer dollars are 
being squandered on illegal aliens that are taking advantage of the 
health care program.
  It's time we yank back the illegal alien welcome mat, eliminate 
perverse incentives for illegal immigration like birth right 
citizenship and taxpayer services for illegal aliens.

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