Courts in US Rely on Nonexistent Mexican Law to Deny Citizenship Tracy Greer - Fronteras Desk
go to original September 27, 2013

Two weeks ago the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled a man born in Mexico was in fact a United States citizen because his father had been born in the U.S. The court acknowledged the man had been wrongfully deported multiple times.

As the Associated Press reported: "In rejecting Sigifredo Saldana Iracheta's bid for citizenship, the government sought to apply an old law that cited Article 314 of the Mexican Constitution, which supposedly dealt with legitimizing out-of-wedlock births. But there was a problem: The Mexican Constitution has no such article. The error appears to have originated in 1978, and it's been repeated ever since, frustrating an untold number of people who are legally entitled to U.S. citizenship but couldn't get it."

At this time it is not known how many applicants for citizenship may have been denied in the same way. As Laura Murray-Tjan of Boston College Law School writes for The Huffington Post: "One shudders to think how many Americans have been deported because of this mistake. And the question becomes, what will the U.S. government do about it?"

Read the rest at Fronteras Desk

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!