Nearly 10 percent of all babies born in the United States in 2023 were to mothers who were either illegal aliens or holding temporary legal status, according to new data released by the Pew Research Center.
The figures, published late last month, show that 320,000 of the roughly 3.6 million babies born across the country that year had mothers who were non-citizens.
This marks the highest total of anchor babies since 2010, when Pew recorded 325,000 such births, and represents an increase for the third straight year.
Of the 320,000 births:
Approximately 245,000 were to mothers who were unauthorized immigrants, with fathers who were neither U.S. citizens nor lawful permanent residents.
Another 15,000 involved mothers with temporary legal status and fathers who were not citizens or lawful permanent residents.
The remaining 60,000 were born to illegal immigrant mothers where the father was a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident.
Pew reports:
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.
Between 2006 and 2019, the annual number of births to unauthorized immigrant mothers dropped by more than 40%, to 215,000.
Pew estimates that roughly 260,000 of these children would not have qualified for automatic U.S. citizenship under President Donald Trump’s January 2025 executive order limiting birthright citizenship to cases where at least one parent is a citizen or lawful permanent resident.
That order is currently facing a legal challenge at the Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments on April 1.
Critics of birthright citizenship have long argued that the current interpretation of the 14th Amendment creates an incentive for illegal immigration by granting citizenship, and associated benefits such as welfare, Medicaid, and future sponsorship rights, to children born on U.S. soil.
“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.
“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,” Carbaugh said.
“Emergency Medicaid loopholes allow illegal aliens to qualify for free labor, delivery, and often prenatal care in some states, so taxpayers pay for these ‘anchor babies,’” Carbaugh added.
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