Court: Applicants wrongly denied U.S. citizenship
For more than two decades, Sigifredo Saldana Iracheta insisted he was a U.S. citizen, repeatedly explaining to immigration officials that he was born to an American father and a Mexican mother in a city just south of the Texas border. Year after year, the federal government rejected his claims, deporting him at least four times and at one point detaining him for nearly two years as he sought permission to join his wife and three children in South Texas.
In rejecting Saldanas 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.
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Saldanas case was finally resolved earlier this month, when the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the governments explanation of a typo and ruled that he had been a citizen since birth. The error, the court said, had been perpetuated and uncorrected by the Department of Homeland Security.
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Saldana argued that he automatically became a U.S. citizen at birth because his father was an American. But because his parents were not married, U.S. authorities claimed he should have been legitimated by age 21 in a process they claimed was governed by Mexican law, specifically the phantom Article 314.
Saldanas birth certificate registered with the Mexican state of Tamaulipas includes both his parents names. The appellate court said that was enough. At oral arguments last month in Houston, Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod was incredulous. So all along, thats been in this case, and you all have been citing this over and over again to people for years now, and you cant even look it up in Mexican law, Walker Elrod said to government attorney Aimee Carmichael. It doesnt even exist.
http://www.concordmonitor.com/news/politics/8661279-95/court-applicants-wrongly-denied-us-citizenship