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Published on Tue, Oct 19, 2010
Wendy Sefsaf, communications director for the American Immigration Council, said there is no proof illegal immigrants come here to have children, only anecdotal stories in articles and newspapers.
“There’s no absolute proof someone would come here and have a baby,” said Ms. Sefsaf. “That baby couldn’t do anything for you until it’s 21 years old, and then sponsor you for permanent residence which could take 10 to 20 years. It’s an imagined problem.”
Ms. Sefsaf also questioned Mr. Metcalfe’s claim the 14th Amendment is being “misapplied” because the original debates around the amendment talked about both rights for African-Americans and for Chinese immigrants.
“It was very purposely passed and set up to take into account both African-Americans and immigrants,” she said. “It’s being applied exactly as it was intended.”
She said illegal immigrants primarily come to the United States for economic reasons, not to have children here.
“It’s almost invariably for economic reasons. We do have a broken immigration system, and we do need to address it comprehensively and fix it, but these patchwork solutions don’t get us anywhere near where we need to be to fix the system,” said Ms. Sefsaf.
Published in the Pennsylvania Independent