The Nation - News from Jan. 12, 1988

Satera Theresias, a 36-year-old Haitian woman, requested asylum in the United States after federal lawyers suggested the birth of her baby aboard a Coast Guard cutter did not qualify the infant for U.S. citizenship. Coast Guard officials initially said the birth Saturday--the first on a cutter--automatically made the child a U.S. citizen. But in Miami, Perry Rivkind, district director of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service said that the general opinion now by INS and State Department lawyers is that being born in international waters on that type of ship does not confer citizenship. “But we’re waiting to make sure there is no precedent,” Rivkind said.