4 Million Illegal Kids

The total number of children living in the United States who were born to illegal immigrants on U.S. soil jumped to 4 million in 2009, up from 2.7 million in 2003, a report released last year estimates.

Those children, who are automatically granted U.S. citizenship, represent 5.4 percent of all children under age 18 in the U.S. That compares with 3.7 percent six years earlier, according to data from the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center. That percentage will continue rising because an estimated 340,000 of the 4.3 million babies born in the U.S. in 2008 alone, or about 8 percent, came from illegal-immigrant parents, the report says.

The study comes as some legislators, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., are calling for a revision of the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to anyone born in the United States.

The percentage of native-born people in the U.S. has fallen for four straight decades, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2008, 12.5 percent of the population was born outside the U.S., nearing the all-time highs of nearly 15 percent in the late 1800s.

"The share of the population that is White non-Hispanic is going to drop," said Jeffrey Passel, senior demographer of the Pew Hispanic Center. "The percentage that consists of immigrants and their children is going to increase."
Bob Dane, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which wants lower levels of legal and illegal immigration, said automatic citizenship for children born in the U.S. is one of the main magnets for illegal immigration.
Dane said many illegal immigrants are searching for jobs. He said many others come here to have a baby who is entitled to a wide array of government benefits and can eventually help the parents become citizens as well. He calls the practice a "corruption of the rule of law."

Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, which supports a process for some illegal immigrants to become citizens, said eliminating birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants would be a colossal mistake.
"It puts the United States of America on the brink of legalizing apartheid," he said.

Noorani said some people have always fought for a change to the 14th Amendment's birthright clause, but he is shocked to see prominent members of Congress suddenly embrace it. He thinks the upcoming November elections are the reason.
"This is a pathetic attempt to gin up a (voting) base," he said. "This is political fear-mongering."

A poll conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press indicated that 56 percent of Americans do not want to bar the children of illegal immigrants born in the U.S. from becoming citizens.

Of people who identified themselves as conservative Republicans, 55 percent support a ban on birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants, while 67 percent of self-described liberal Democrats oppose such a ban. The poll of 1,802 adults was conducted in June and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The childbirth study was based on data from the census, and the center analyzed demographic characteristics of the illegal-immigrant population.