Congrats, Texas, you are now as morally bankrupt as the Dominican Republic — and unconstitutional to boot. It turns out that since last winter, the Texas Department of State Health Services has refused to issue birth certificates to children born in Texas of undocumented parents, thus violating the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.  

Amendment XIV

Section 1.

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. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The Texas Observer notes that the practice of refusing to issue birth certificates coincided with the upswing in unaccompanied Central American minors coming across the border late last year, and that four women filed a lawsuit in the Western District alleging discrimination. According to lawyers with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, however, dozens of others have been refused birth certificates as well and additional plaintiffs have been added to the lawsuit.

Like the Dominican Republic — which went so far as to amend its constitution in order to refuse jus solis citizenship to those born on Dominican soil to undocumented Haitian immigrants — the Texas practice renders the U.S.-born children stateless, and singles out only the children of a particular group of residents. While the Dominican Republic amended its constitution to institutionalize its bigotry, Texas is making its bigotry all but constitutional.

In March of this year Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) proposed a Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act which Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) sought to amend to end birthright citizenship. The amendment was ultimately dropped before the Act was passed.  

“Eliminating Birthright Citizenship would create a perpetual class of undocumented immigrants, ironically growing the undocumented population by ensuring that undocumented children, and their children, and their children’s children, can never come out of the shadows and be equal before the law.” N.J. Sen. Bob Menendez said in opposition to Vitter's proposed amendment. “This new permanent underclass would inevitably lead to some without any citizenship to any country – in other words stateless. The new underclass would be subject to the worst forms of exploitation."