Settlement to help border residents

A settlement reached by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the U.S. State Department will help some residents along the U.S.-Mexico border to legally obtain a passport.

Hundreds of passport applicants had their petitions denied by immigration officials because they suspected Texas midwives may have fraudulently registered Mexican births in the U.S. At one point over 250 midwives were blacklisted by the government but no clear explanation was given as to why. With changes in re-entering the country taking place at the beginning of the month, hundreds of border residents risked being unable to legally cross the border.

Pending court approval, the settlement creates several key changes in the application process:

Those changes include retraining employees who process applications and setting up an automatic review process for denials by a three-member panel.

The settlement also requires that the government review its list of midwives suspected of birth certificate fraud to ensure there is a “reasonable belief” that they were involved in wrongdoing.

“The settlement really ensures now that the State Department will fairly issue passports to Mexican-Americans and will hopefully get rid of the problems that hundreds of people were encountering when trying to get passports,” said Vanita Gupta, staff attorney with the ACLU Racial Justice Program. “It just has a real-life impact on people living on the border.”

Image-cleveland.com (“The pedestrian line for people entering the U.S. from Mexico at the Gateway International Bridge in Brownsville, Texas…”)
Online Sources- AP, MySA.com