San Diego Immigration Attorney - Featured in San Diego Reader About Birthright Citizenship

Jacob Sapochnick was interviewed about Birthright Citizenship issues and the unique practice of Immigration Law in San Diego.

The first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” This “citizenship clause” overturned the Dred Scott decision, the pre–Civil War law that denied blacks citizenship.

In recent years, Congress has tightened immigration law, funded border security, beefed up penalties for businesses hiring illegals, and denied citizenship to the children of foreign nationals (those brought here at a young age) by defeating the Dream Act. What’s more, many politicians and activists have called the citizenship clause into question; they label those who receive automatic citizenship “anchor babies.” The designation, which critics call racially tinged, implies that parents come here illegally to insure their own presence in America via childbirth.

"....What Sapochnick would like to see — “I can tell you, in the next ten years, amnesty is not going to happen” — is a return to a short-lived period in early 2001, when immigrants with undocumented status could pay a fine and begin the citizen process without fear of deportation. Signed into law by President Clinton as he left office, section 245i declared that if you proved you’d been in the country for a long time, you could pay a $1000 fine and, as Sapochnick notes, “We’ll let you become legal.” A revival of that law, which ended in April 2001, would, for his clients, mean a kind of pocket amnesty...."

Read the Article here...