The lesser of two evils

The lesser of two evils | Daily Tribune

This corner leans toward the former.

Using a boxing analogy, America’s birth tourism menace comes with a relatively superficial damage that can be fixed, even shaken off, like Manny Pacquiao’s 12-round defeat in the hands of Mexican pugilist Erik Morales during their initial ring encounter decades ago.

In contrast, the Philippines’ birth registration crisis can cause permanent damage to the country’s national psyche, shattering the people’s collective impregnability confidence, a situation horrendously similar to Manny Pacquiao’s devastating knockout loss to Mexican brawler Juan Manuel Marquez during their boxing tetralogy finale many years ago.

America’s birth tourism, as abhorrent a concept as it may be, has long been a staple of the US immigration system. In fact, it wasn’t that long ago that the US government — buoyed by the globalization trend then prevailing — had indirectly encouraged the practice by making it easier for foreign expectant mothers to obtain a visitor visa for pregnancy-related medical reasons.

Historical research reveals the existence of certain time periods during which traveling to America with specific intent to give birth for citizenship reasons — medically sanctioned or not — was considered an innocuous undertaking for visa issuance purposes.

Why is this so? It’s because birth tourism, although teetering precariously on the opposite spectrums of constitutionality and illegality, is partially anchored on a firm constitutional foundation: the doctrine of birthright citizenship, which grants US citizenship to every person born on US soil and its territories, except for certain classes of aliens.

Thus, unless visa fraud is clearly present, every child born in America is presumed to be a US citizen by birth. Since the birth tourism menace — assuming it can even be considered as such under the US Constitution — can easily be eradicated through a simple bureaucratic tweaking of the visa issuance policy, whatever damage, if any, it is causing America as a country is relatively trivial, considering that the US Constitution itself promotes birthright citizenship.

In contrast, the Philippines’ delayed birth registration crisis has no constitutional basis and is in fact a mere by-product of a rule-making gaffe. Pursuant to Republic Act 3753, a 1930s law that delegated to the Civil Registrar General the power to promulgate rules and regulations concerning birth registration, a controversial Administrative Order (AO No.1-S.1993, as amended) was issued — albeit deficiently.

Inexplicably, the AO only requires, rounding out a bundle of evidentiary banalities, a sworn but simple explanation as to why the birth was not registered in a timely fashion, with no significant penalty for fraudulent submission. Not unexpectedly, this tolerant policy has become a powerful magnet for unscrupulous individuals, including sleeper agents from China, who want a quick but poisonous bite of the country’s citizenship pie.

The result? A heavily compromised Filipino citizenship registry that seriously undermines the country’s national security and territorial sovereignty.