Arizona lawmakers on Thursday filed four bills for consideration that they hope will change how the U.S. recognizes children of illegal immigrants.

House Bill 2561 and Senate Bill 1309 defines an Arizona citizen as someone "lawfully domiciled" in Arizona who is born in the U.S. and is "subject to the jurisdiction thereof." It defines individuals who are subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. as children who have at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen, a U.S. national or a legal permanent U.S. resident.

House Bill 2562 and Senate Bill 1308 would require Arizona to create separate birth certificates for children who are deemed to be Arizona citizens under House Bill 2561 and those who are not. It also seeks permission from Congress to form compacts with other states doing the same thing.

Phoenix birthright citizenship bill protest

HB 2561: Arizona citizenship | Birth certificates

This morning, opposition groups gathered at the state Capitol waving signs and speaking out against the effort. Democratic lawmakers and immigrant rights groups held news conferences throughout the day.

Sen. Ron Gould, R-Lake Havasu City, and Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, are the primary bill sponsors. Twenty-seven Republican lawmakers have signed on support, but others commented that the Legislature should be focusing on the budget, jobs or border security instead.

Senate President Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, who along with Kavanagh led the effort to get Senate Bill 1070 passed last year, has been working on this issue for years. Kansas attorney Kris Kobach, who helped draft SB 1070 and in November was elected Kansas Secretary of State, also helped with this legislation.

Unlike with SB 1070, Arizona won't be alone in this effort. Lawmakers from about a dozen states have united under State Legislators for Legal Immigration and are expected to consider identical birthright citizenship legislation in their states this year. However, Arizona seems to be the first state so far to actually introduce the bills.

States have oversight over birth certificates and, to an extent, over who can receive state services, but citizenship is a federal issue. Creating different birth certificates, or giving people different levels of access to state services based on information on birth certificates, would open the state to federal lawsuits.

Kavanagh, Pearce and the other lawmakers say that's exactly what they want: to force these lawsuits so the federal courts will consider whether the 14th Amendment truly grants citizenship to children born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants.

"The court needs to rule on this so we can figure out how to treat these kids," Gould said.

The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, states that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

Those who favor reform say illegal immigrants aren't "subject to the jurisdiction" of the U.S, so their children can't qualify for birthright citizenship.

"The parents broke the law," Pearce said. "There are consequences of breaking laws."

Rep. Richard Miranda, D-Tolleson, said the Legislature should be working to strengthen Arizona's economy, not bringing the state more "ridicule and anger."

"We must act together to move Arizona forward and not act as individuals who seek to be celebrities," he said.

Sen. Steve Gallardo, D-Phoenix, compared the idea of two birth certificates to the days of "separate but equal."

"This takes us back to the time when we had separate drinking fountains ... swimming pools ... public education, one for Black and one for White," he said.

Rep. Catherine Miranda, D-Phoenix, compared the bill's agenda to that of Nazi Germany.

"Today in Arizona, thousands of Arizona mothers go to work not knowing if they will return to their families or end up in deportation centers," she said. "Who can doubt that we are experiencing a holocaust in Arizona."

Rep. Albert Hale, D-Window Rock, a Navajo, said that under these bills he would be considered an "anchor baby" because Native Americans were not granted citizenship until 1924.

"My grandfather was not a citizen. My mother, born in 1919, was not a citizen," he said. "So I am a child of a non-citizen and therefore illegal. Am I to be deported? And If I am, where are you going to deport me to?"

He warned that passing these bills would create a crisis of children "who are stateless and without a country."

"This will create a class of people who are not welcome in the country where they are born," he said. "This is not the Arizona I know. This is not the Arizona I want."

Attorney Steve Montoya, who was involved with the lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of SB 1070, called the bill a "complete waste of time."

"When we're having to close schools because we're bankrupt, these jokers are pushing laws that will only push the state further into debt," he said. "This law reflects the ignorance of the people who wrote it."

He said the bills are so blatantly unconstitutional that it's unlikely the Supreme Court would even consider them.

"The state of Arizona cannot overturn the 14th Amendment," he said.

A group of Arizona ranchers held a news conference Thursday morning to unveil their plan for securing the border.

Sen. Sylvia Allen, R-Snowflake, who is supporting the rancher's efforts, said the Legislature needs to help address the problems at the border before tackling issues like birthright citizenship. She said she did not sign on as a sponsor of Gould's bills.

"Border security is number one," she said. "That will help slow down so many of the other problems we have."

Sen. Steve Smith, R-Maricopa, said he thinks the Legislature can and is addressing several different prongs of the immigration problem at once.

"You can walk and chew gum at the same time," he said. "There are so many different parts that factor into this problem."

He said he will support Gould's bill and will introduce a bill of his own to collect donations to help build a wall along the Mexican border.

According to a study released in August by the Pew Hispanic Center, about 340,000 children were born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants in 2008. Most were born to parents who had lived in the U.S. for more than a year. Pew researchers could not say how many of those children were born in Arizona but did say that about 4 percent of the nation's illegal immigrants are in Arizona.

If 4 percent of the 340,000 children in the U.S. born to illegal immigrants are also in Arizona, that would equate to about 13,600 children born in Arizona in 2008.

Kavanagh has said his primary concern is not parents using their children to become citizens but the amount of money the children cost taxpayers because, as citizens, they have access to social services such as health care and welfare.

There are a number of Arizona taxpayer-funded services that non-citizens are eligible for, such as public school. But only legal residents can get food stamps, cash assistance under the needy-families program, a driver's license and in-state college tuition.

Previous legislative efforts in Arizona to change the way the state handles birth certificates have failed.

In 2007, an initiative called the Birthright Citizenship Alignment Act that would have required hospitals to check the citizenship of the parents of newborns failed to make the ballot. In 2008, former state Sen. Karen Johnson, R-Mesa, proposed asking voters to change the way the state issues birth certificates. Birth certificates would have still been given to children of illegal immigrants, but the certificates would have stated "that the child was born to parents who were not in this country legally and that the child is not eligible for benefits that require United States citizenship."

Pearce, a state representative at the time, was one of the sponsors. The bill was never given a committee hearing.