Yaser Esam Hamdi is not a U.S. citizen and should be shipped out of the country

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Immigration group says captive is no U.S. citizen By TIM MCGLONE, The Virginian-Pilot © August 23, 2002

NORFOLK -- Yaser Esam Hamdi is not a U.S. citizen and should be shipped out of the country, an immigration watchdog group argued in court papers challenging Hamdi's citizenship. The latest argument in the befuddling Hamdi case comes in a filing in federal court Thursday by Friends of Immigration Law Enforcement, a new organization pushing for enforcement of immigration laws.

Craig Nelsen of Omaha, Neb., a longtime critic of U.S. immigration policy, said he filed the motion to challenge the 14th Amendment's custom of granting automatic birthright citizenship.

Hamdi, who was born in Louisiana to Saudi Arabian parents, was captured fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan against the Northern Alliance. His father was working in the United States for a Saudi oil conglomerate and brought his family with him. They lived here three years, but Hamdi's parents never became U.S. citizens.

Hamdi's lawyer and an immigration advocate said Nelsen's motion doesn't have a chance.

Email this Page Newsletter Sign-up Get Wireless Pilot Subscriptions ``It's certainly very clear throughout U.S. immigration law that people born in the U.S. are U.S. citizens even if they're born to undocumented individuals,'' said Nadine K. Wettstein, director of the legal action center of the American Immigration Law Foundation. ``It's a bedrock principle of this country.''

Frank W. Dunham Jr., the federal public defender seeking Hamdi's freedom, has argued that the government is violating Hamdi's constitutional rights by holding him in the Norfolk Naval Station brig without access to a lawyer and without charging him with a crime.

He said even the government has not argued that Hamdi isn't a citizen.

The Friends of Immigration Law Enforcement has ``a different view of the law on citizenship than the U.S. government,'' Dunham said. ``If the baby is born here, nobody in this day and age challenges that the person isn't a citizen,'' he said. ``This is the land of the free and the home of the brave.''

Nelsen argues that the Constitution's 14th Amendment does not guarantee citizenship to the children of foreign workers, illegal aliens and foreign tourists. He said the government has only permitted that custom as a courtesy, but not as a matter of law.

He said Hamdi should be shipped back to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to be treated the same as other foreign detainees from the war in Afghanistan.

Nelsen also wrote to U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson appealing that Hamdi be stripped of his citizenship.

``Mr. Hamdi is not an American in any real sense of the word, and is, legally, a citizen of Saudi Arabia and a captured foreign enemy combatant,'' Nelsen wrote.

Efforts to outlaw automatic citizenship have failed in Congress in recent years, Nelsen said Thursday. He said he filed the court papers in the Hamdi case with the hope of taking the issue to the U.S. Supreme Court. He said his goal is to outlaw all automatic citizenships of children born here to foreign parents.

``We know we have the overwhelming support of the American people,'' he wrote to Olson.

The Friends of Immigration Law Enforcement is a new group with about 75 members, mostly attorneys. Nelsen is better known as director of Project USA, an anti-immigration group that advocates a halt to immigration until reforms are in place.

U.S. District Court Judge Robert G. Doumar, who is hearing the Hamdi case, must decide whether to hold a hearing on Nelsen's motion.

Meanwhile, the case has been sent to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to answer a technical legal issue.

-- Anonymous, August 27, 2002


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