Children of U.S. citizens are falling victim to a policy that de-recognizes their parents’ marriage—and strips them of their birthright citizenship
By Scott Bixby | Daily Beast
No parent can ever be fully prepared for the arrival of a new baby. But when Roee and Adiel Kiviti brought home their newborn daughter Kessem two months ago, they figured that they were as ready as they could be. After all, they’d gone through the same process two years earlier with their son Lev, who, like Kessem, was born with the help of an egg donor and a gestational surrogate in Canada.
“It was as straightforward as one can imagine,” Roee told The Daily Beast,recalling the ease of bringing Lev home in late 2016, the infant’s newly printed Canadian passport in hand, soon to be supplanted by an American one. But this February, when Kessem’s fathers contacted the U.S. consulate in Calgary to obtain a Consular Report of Birth Abroad for their daughter—the legal equivalent of a birth certificate for Americans born outside of the United States—something was different this time.
“When the Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodgesconfirmed the right to marry to same sex couples, it explained that one of the bases for protecting the right to marry is that it safeguards children and families, and thus draws meaning from related rights of childrearing, procreation, and education. This manipulation of the INA targeting same sex couples and depriving children born to those same sex couples of recognition and lawful citizenship does not uphold these core values, but rather knowingly obstructs them. We should strive to bring families together, not tear them apart.”
