The American Civil Liberties Union is suing the U.S. State Department for denying passports to Mexican-American citizens delivered by midwives in South Texas stating that federal authorities “have adopted and applied blanket suspicion toward one group of passport applicants … effectively denying the passports of many for the apparent sins of a few.” The complaint was filed yesterday in a U.S. District Court in McAllen, Texas. Midwifery was a common alternative to hospital deliveries for generations past in the Rio Grande Valley, one of the poorest parts of America. With a June 2009 deadline looming for all U.S. citizens to obtain passports for travel in Mexico, the number of passport requests has gone up significantly in the region because many people living in the Rio Grande Valley have family in Mexico. But because about 75 midwives since 1960 have been convicted of forging birth certificates for infants they did not deliver, the government doesn’t trust any midwife documents. Seventy five whole convictions in 48 years? Wow, that is an epidemic. And, not for nothing, but this has exactly what to do with terrorism?

It is not clear when U.S. officials began viewing midwife certificates with suspicion. State Department spokesman Cy Ferenchak confirmed the policy to the Brownsville Herald in Texas earlier this summer. The paper quoted him as saying, “Normally, a birth certificate is sufficient to prove citizenship… . But because of a history of fraudulently filed reports on the Southwest border, we don’t have much faith in the document.”

Ferenchak also told the Herald that applicants can prove their citizenship with something as simple as a newspaper announcement of their birth or a record of their mother’s pre-natal care. Pre-natal care? No mames.

The Texas Midwifery Board reports that in 1925 more than 50 percent of the babies born in Texas were delivered by midwives. By 2004, the number had dropped to 6.6 percent. Still, 21,321 babies were born to midwives and other non-physicians in the state.

“It’s just a part of the culture here in Brownsville,” said Mayor Pat M. Ahumada, who was himself delivered by a midwife.

Midwife Delivery Can Lead to Passport Denial [Washington Post]
Harsh Reality: Faulty midwife practices has the federal government questioning border residents’ citizenships [Brownsville Herald via]