Everything Tagged with 'immigration'
Supreme Court’s Ruling Sexist Against Fathers
The Supreme Court recent ruled, in a vote of 4-4, to uphold a law which makes it difficult for fathers to extend citizenship in immigration cases to their out-of-wedlock children.
The New York Times’s editorial board:
Children born outside the country to an unmarried American parent are considered American citizens at birth if the parent lived in the United States before the child was born. For a mother, the required period of residence is one year. For a father, it is 10 years, five of them after he turns 14. Fathers must also prove parenthood and pledge to support the child.
In a decision based on an outmoded stereotype that fathers are less committed parents, the Supreme Court let this obvious discrimination stand last week when it affirmed a ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Flores-Villar v. the United States.
Martha Davis, in an op-ed for The Boston Globe:
Surprisingly, this issue of sex discrimination in citizenship has deeply divided the Supreme Court for more than a decade. Yet there shouldn’t be a controversy here: the law at issue in the Flores-Villar case is one of the few sex-specific laws still remaining in the federal statute books. It clearly discriminates against men who want to extend US citizenship to their out-of-wedlock children. The residency requirements upheld in the Flores-Villar case have nothing to do with the aspects of childbirth in which mothers and fathers might have distinct circumstances thanks to basic biology. Moreover, this distinction violates both international human rights law and well-established domestic constitutional principles of sex equality.
It’s a shame that our judicial system is still mired in such outdated, sexist and stereotypical thinking about fathers. This decision basically sends the message that fathers play no important role in children’s lives, and are somehow the “lesser” parent – despite the reality to the contrary. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Flores-Villar v. the United States isn’t just a setback for immigration advocates; it’s a setback for families and children across the nation.