Fisher: Citizenship, Federalism, and Delayed Birth Registration 2024] B. C ITIZENSHIP, F EDERALISM, AND DELAYED BIRTH R EGISTRATION 69 Reasons why Births are Unregistered The review of court documents and newspaper reports above suggests three explanations for why births now go unregistered. 119 First, racial discrimination and discrimination against immigrants leads to some children lacking birth registration, as demonstrated by recent examples of expulsions of noncitizen mothers with U.S. citizen infants who did not yet have birth certificates and Texas officials’ refusal to issue birth certificates to children of undocumented noncitizens 120 Other undocumented noncitizens may decline to approach officials for fear of being apprehended by immigration authorities. 121 Second, births may go unregistered due to increased numbers of outof-institution births—in particular for parents choosing to deliver at home. 122 Births that occur in a hospital or other institution will be registered by the hospital staff as a matter of course. 123 Likewise, physicians, midwives, and other healthcare workers who deliver babies outside of institutions are generally obligated to report births promptly.124 Requirements to register births that occur outside of medical institutions often have higher evidentiary requirements. 125 These higher requirements may also lead to some births going unregistered. 119. Diekneite & Garrison, supra note 52 (noting many people lived without birth registration in the United States in decades past, particularly in racially minoritized communities and rural areas). 120. Misra, supra note 59; Ura, supra note 60 (noting that children born in the United States were denied birth certificates after the state of Texas refused to register the births of children absent certain forms of identification presented by the parents); Fernandez, supra note 60 (noting that hundreds of undocumented families in Texas were unable to register their child’s births). 121. See Daniela Alulema & Jacquelyn Pavilon, Immigrants’ Use of New York City Programs, Services, and Benefits: Examining the Impact of Fear and Other Barriers to Access, C TR. FOR MIGRATION S TUD. (Jan. 31, 2022), https://cmsny.org/publications/nyc-programs-services-andbenefits-report-013122/ [https://perma.cc/9DY6-5DNP] (noting that immigrant families may decline to seek public benefits because of fear about immigration consequences); see Bogin-Farber, supra note 67, at 170-71; In re Garcia-Eusiquio, 259 P.3d 917, 918 (Or. Ct. App. 2011) (“According to petitioner . . . she feared that her son’s father would be arrested if authorities were informed that petitioner and the father had conceived another child.”). 122. See MacDorman & Declercq, supra note 45 at 279 (“Home births increased by 77% from 2004–2017.”). 123. Id. at 280. 124. See, e.g., C ONN. GEN. S TAT. § 7-49 (1995) (suspending the license of a medical practitioner in Connecticut who fails to file a birth certificate until the certificate is filed); S.C. C ODE. ANN. § 4463-161 (2003) (making willful violation of the duty to report a birth a criminal misdemeanor in South Carolina). 125. N.M. C ODE R. § 7.2.2.10(E) (LexisNexis 2019); N.M. C ODE R. 7.2.2.9 (LexisNexis 2019) (requiring that, if an unattended birth is not registered within a year, the delayed registration process is unavailable and can only be registered via a court order); see also ARIZ. ADMIN. C ODE § R9-19204 (2020); C ONN. GEN. S TAT. § 7-48(b) (2008); C ONN. AGENCIES R EGS. § 19a-41-1 (1996); D.C. C ODE § 7-231.08(h) (2018) (requiring additional evidence, including for immediate birth Published by IdeaExchange@UAkron, 2025 21