300,000 'anchor babies' born each year in U.S.

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An average of about 300,000 children of illegal aliens are born in the United States each year as American citizens, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data.

The Center for Immigration Studies, which conducted the analysis, noted that the U.S. policy of birthright citizenship enables the illegal alien and non-citizen parents of so-called anchor babies eventually to bring in scores of relatives through the legal immigration process known as "chain migration," Breitbart News reported.

An estimated 4.5 million anchor babies reside in the U.S., costing taxpayers about $2.4 billion every year to subsidize hospital costs.

The annual number of anchor babies born in the U.S. exceeds the combined number of births in 16 states plus the District of Columbia.

Breitbart noted the Supreme Court has never explicitly ruled that the children of illegal aliens must be granted birthright citizenship, and many legal scholars dispute the idea. The U.S. and Canada are the only two developed nations with birthright citizenship.

'Zero connection to the United States'

President Trump vowed in October 2018 to end the policy, but it remains intact.

He made an issue of it as early as 2011 in his book "Time to Get Tough: Making America #1 Again," which contains a five-point plan on immigration reform.

Among the proposals is to clarify the meaning of the 14th Amendment, contending it is being misinterpreted to establish a legal basis for birthright citizenship.

"Some four million anchor babies are now officially U.S. citizens," Trump wrote. "This has to stop. The only other major country in the world that issues citizenship based on where one's mother delivers her child is Canada. The rest of the world bases citizenship on who the kid's parents are, which is of course the only sane standard."

He asked: "If a pregnant American mother is traveling to Egypt on business and goes into delivery, do we instantly declare her child an Egyptian? Of course not."

But in the United States, he wrote, "women who have zero connection to the United States cross the border, deliver a baby, and their kid magically becomes an American citizen eligible to receive all the rights and benefits of those who have lived, worked, and paid taxes in our country."

The 14th Amendment states: "All citizens born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the state wherein they reside."

Trump argued that the "clear purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, three years after the end of the Civil War, was to guarantee full citizenship rights to now emancipated former slaves."

"It was not intended to guarantee untrammeled immigration to the United States," he wrote.

Trump expressed support for previous discussion by Republican Sens. John Kyl of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina about introducing a constitutional amendment to "clarify and restore the original intent of the Fourteenth Amendment."