Make change to clarify citizenship

Elvira Arellano, an unlawful immigrant, contends she should be allowed to stay in this country to raise her son Saul, who was born here and is therefore a U.S. citizen.

The solution to this problem is simply to further amend the U.S. Constitution. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution, as originally drafted before the days of immigration problems, provides that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States. At no time was it ever conceived that this amendment would be abused by persons unlawfully here who would then seek to remain here on the grounds that they had had a child who was born here and therefore was a lawful citizen. Their assertion is that parenthood of a child born here is a sufficient ground to permit unlawful immigrant parents to stay in the U.S. to raise their child here.

There is only one solution to this problem. We must amend the 14th Amendment to read, "All persons born in the United States to parents lawfully in the United States at the time of the person's birth, or naturalized in the United States, are citizens of the United States."

Without such an amendment, we will continue to have the problem of "coincidental citizenship" for those children born to parents who happen to be unlawfully in this country at the time of the child's birth.

This problem was not within the contemplation of the Constitution's drafters, and we must correct this problem now.

Theodore M. Utchen Wheaton