Nearly one in ten births in 2023 in the United States under the Biden administration came from illegal immigrant parents, according to fresh birthrate data.
The Pew Research Center revealed some 320,000 of the 3.6 million babies born in the U.S. that year were so called “anchor babies” who would not qualify for birthright citizenship if President Donald Trump’s executive order is upheld by the Supreme Court.
Further crunching the numbers, means about 260,000 babies would not have qualified for citizenship under Trump’s executive order.
Digging deeper, Pew found that about 245,000 of those babies were born to mothers who were “unauthorized immigrants” and fathers who were not citizens or lawful permanent residents.
About 15,000 of them were born to mothers who had temporary legal status and fathers who were not citizens or lawful permanent residents.
Looking at the bigger picture, Pew found:
Generally, the trends in births to unauthorized immigrants follow the growth and decline of the unauthorized immigrant population. The number of unauthorized immigrants more than tripled from 1990 to 2007. The number of births also more than tripled, from 120,000 in 1990 to a peak of about 380,000 in 2006.
In 1990, births to unauthorized immigrant mothers were about 3% of the 4.1 million births in the U.S. that year. In 2006, these births were about 9% of the total.
The anchor baby births in 2023 is the highest total since 2010, the second year of the Obama administration, when 325,000 babies were born to illegal immigrant parents, according to Pew.
Analysts of the trend say there is an impact behind those numbers.
“Under the current erroneous birthright citizenship interpretation, these children automatically become citizens and unlock food stamps, welfare, specialized schooling for English education, and eventually college aid,” Brandy Perez Carbaugh of the Heritage Foundation told the New York Post.
The analyst added, “High volumes of illegal and temporary aliens are having children in the US because they are exploiting the decades-old erroneous interpretation that such children are US citizens.”
The Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments earlier this month in Trump v. Barbara, which challenges President Trump’s president’s executive order limiting birthright citizenship.
At issue is the amendment’s language: “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.”
The right of birthright citizenship was granted in the 14th Amendment adopted in 1868.
It was adopted following the Civil War as part of a Reconstruction program to “guarantee equal civil and legal rights to Black citizens,” according to the National Archives, ensuring former slaves were to be considered citizens.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) argued before the high court that the amendment was never intended to apply to everyone who had a child while in the U.S. and was intended for the former slaves.
Citing the “subject to the jurisdiction” clause in the amendment, the DOJ argued that meant it applied to non citizens within the full political jurisdiction of the nation.
Thus, undocumented immigrants were not entitled to birthright citizenship because their parents’ presence in the country is either temporary or banned.
The 14th Amendment was also tested 30 years after it passed in an 1895 case involving the son of Chinese parents in San Francisco who were not citizens but lived in the U.S. The high court ruled that indeed the son was a citizen under the amendment.
The Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling on the matter in late June or early July.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
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