Undocumented Parents Now Able to Request USC Children’s Birth Certificates

San Juan, Texas- Thousands of illegal immigrants with U.S. born children will now be able to request their kid’s birth certificates.

The announcement comes after the state of Texas decided to settle a lawsuit with pro-immigrant groups that called the law unconstitutional.

Six year old Ana Maria Loera, along with her five and three year old sisters Dalia and Noelia have grown up with their other four siblings without a birth certificate. Their mother, Dania had to search for other ways to prove her daughters were born in the U.S. in order to enroll them in school.
In 2013, Texas narrowed the list of identity cards a parent could present in order to get their child’s birth certificate. For Dania it was a nightmare. “There was even a person there that just ripped my application apart.” Said Loera after multiple requests for their certificates.
Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid attorney Jennifer Harbury said as many as five people a day were being turned away at their local office.
Those people couldn’t get birth certificates for their children born here without going back into the drug war in Mexico, said Harbury. That caused all kinds of problems for head start, for school, if there was a misspelling on a Medicaid card it was impossible to straighten out, and they couldn’t prove their children were theirs if they got stopped by immigration.
All that changed Friday evening when the state agreed to settle the case allowing other forms of identification that residents or undocumented immigrants were able to request at their consulate.
In the coming days, the Texas Department of State Health Services will be giving instructions on how to proceed with the new guidelines.
Loera said she’ll request the birth certificates as soon as she can before officials change their minds. Without them, she believes it could hinder her daughters’ education and their future.
It not yet clear when parents can start filing for their children’s birth certificate, but the state did announce it would provide a hotline to help resolve these cases.

 

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