The last time I wrote about U.S. citizenship, I got beat down pretty hard by some peeps I admire for viewing it through the lens of “privilege”, that is how citizenship, held up as the end all and be all of life in the United States affords certain privileges that non-citizenship does not, mainly voting rights and a certain level of security that I will not/cannot expelled from the country (save a seditious conspiracy charge or something I guess). Even the “privileges” of U.S. citizenship are conditional however. You must actually live in the United States, not in one of it’s colonies in order to vote for President and have actual representation in Congress. Your right to vote can be and will be taken away if you are convicted of a felony. Thinking of who are the colonial U.S. citizens and who are the overwhelming number of felons (thanks in no small part to disparities in drug sentencing laws and racial profiling) U.S. citizenship as a carrot to prove loyalty and as a stick to beat communities of color with, isn’t a new concept. So now, with renewed threats of taking away the citizenship status of the U.S. born children of undocumented immigrants, I am reflecting again on the idea of “citizenship” and how that has been used specifically against people of color, immigrants mujeres, and our children.

Ever since I started writing more about immigration and have become more involved with various organizations and individuals working around the issue, I have been struck by the assumption that “a pathway to legalization” is almost always translated as “a pathway to citizenship”, as if the two were one and the same. To this day I have yet to see polls on the desire to be a citizen vs the desire to live without fear of having your family torn apart. Which desire should trump the other? Should the desire to want to vote for Latino representation in Congress trump the desire to be able to report a crime and feel like your won’t be abused again by the state?

The issue of “birthright” citizenship resonates deeply with me pero not for reasons you may think. Everyday something happens, I hear a catchphrase or a slogan, even from those within one of my “communities” that reminds me of why I have my citizenship, why my mother has hers, and my grandmother (EPD) had hers. I hear phrases like “taking back our country” and “not in my America” and am reminded that this is not my country. This U.S. citizenship was given to my grandparents and their generation one day as a sad consolation for losing their health, their work, their language, their flag, and for some mujeres in my family: their ability to have children. When Sonia Sotomayor was being considered for the Supreme Court, another Latina called me out for claiming my family experience as a migrant/immigrant experience. No, my family didn’t have to cross a border, cross a desert, cross a river. The U.S. military crossed over and colonialism forced migration. And with what benefit?

According to a recently released report by the National Council of La Raza and the Annie E. Casey Foundation:

Children in Puerto Rico are more likely to fail nine out of ten key indicators of child well-being, including facing higher levels of risk than children in the mainland United States for low birth weight, teen idleness, and poverty.

Now this is important because these, U.S. citizen children, allegedly getting the benefit of their status like medicaid, welfare etc are not doing well. These brown, Spanish speaking children of Spanish speaking parents who are also U.S. citizens are not doing well under a system that promised them better outcomes. One of the arguments Congressman Kyl and his ilk use to argue denying citizenship to children of immigrants, is that these children burden the system without giving back. What we are seeing in Puerto Rico, which has had U.S. citizenship since 1917, is that the carrot of citizenship, it’s privileges and promises hasn’t given the island’s children much. Over and over again here at VivirLatino, we have written how the Health Care Reform Plan throws immigrants, even those with legal status under the proverbial bus, and there is plenty of mainstream reporting to back that up.

# The child poverty rate for Puerto Rico (56%) is more than three times the level in the U.S. as a whole (18%), while more than half (51%) of children live in families where no parent has full-time, year-round employment, nearly twice the national rate (27%).

The carrot of U.S. citizenship hasn’t worked for the Rican community, stateside or on the island colony. In between status with half-assed rights has failed our children whether they be university students, young mujeres just living their lives, or living here in the good ole U.S. of A where allegedly we can exercise all the privileges and responsibilities of citizenship.

The anti-immigrant side have been quick to remind people that the 14th amendment was meant to protect former slaves, not everyone or anyone else, and certainly not immigrant woman and their children. Here we have another example of divide and conquer politics, where a Constitutional right is labeled the territory of one group, with another group being painted as taking advantage of that. I want Kyl then to go all the way with his threat. I want him to deal with the way granted citizenship impacts all brown people with z’s at the end of their names and address how the stick of U.S. citizenship beats people down as much as the golden carrot lure does. Maybe then we can get real and realize this isn’t about people using resources. It’s about erasing the realities of Latino/Latin American existence in the U.S., from sea to shining occupied sea. Citizenship won’t save any of us. The recognition of basic human rights will.