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By Luige del Puerto - luige.delpuerto@azcapitoltimes.com
June 4, 2010 at 10:25 am
Arizona’s new immigration law has yet to take effect, but Sen. Russell Pearce has already moved on to the next step in his quest to rid Arizona of illegal immigrants: deny birth certificates to children born in the U.S. to non-citizen parents.
But that’s not all. Pearce said he also wants to require students who are here illegally to pay tuition to attend public schools.
RELATED: Pearce seeks to deny citizenship to children of illegals
RELATED: Another immigration plan: charge tuition for illegal students
The proposals, which Pearce said he plans to introduce as legislation next year, are part of a coordinated strategy by Pearce and groups such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) to remove all incentives for illegal immigrants to live in the U.S.
“My issue is protecting the taxpayers. You can’t come here illegally and not be a legal resident and expect the taxpayers to pick up your tab,” Pearce said.
Critics, though, said revoking citizenship to people born in the U.S. would undermine the principles on which the nation was founded and redefine citizenship for far more people than Pearce may be envisioning. It may even create a set of people who lack citizenship of any country.
Requiring children to prove citizenship to attend public school, they said, would create a permanent lower class of uneducated residents who would be unable to sustain themselves or contribute to their communities.
“Why penalize the child?” asked Sen. Amanda Aguirre, a Democrat from Yuma. “Why do we want to create this type of society where a certain group of children — we want them to grow up without education?”
Within the last decade, Arizona has passed laws to deny public benefits to illegal immigrants, penalize business owners who hire undocumented workers and arrest people who cannot prove they are U.S. citizens.
But Pearce’s most recent ideas go far beyond establishing stricter enforcement of immigration laws and may signal the next steps for Pearce and immigration hawks across the nation: redefining citizenship and targeting the children of illegal immigrants.
“What is markedly different is that Russell Pearce, up to this point in time, has been bootstrapping federal law to justify his state laws,” immigration attorney Matthew White said. “This is a drastic approach that’s saying ‘I am now going to interpret the 14th Amendment. I am now the federal law and you are going to listen to me.’”
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