Shouldn’t it be a source of great concern that in 2008 alone, 8 percent of all babies born in the United States were the children of at least one and in many cases two illegal aliens?
That is a total of 340,000 babies – roughly equal to the entire population of Hamilton County!
That statistic about babies of illegals came from an analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center.
Part of what is so alarming is that each child born here of an illegal parent automatically becomes a U.S. citizen – eligible for a range of educational, health and other benefits at taxpayer expense. (Many illegal aliens also regrettably receive those tax-funded benefits.)
What’s more, the U.S. citizenship status of babies born in the United States to illegal-alien parents allows them eventually to petition to bring more relatives to the United States from their home countries. For that reason, they are sometimes called “anchor babies.”
Just as disturbing, birthrates among illegal aliens are much higher than among Americans as a whole. As The Orlando Sentinel noted, “The children of illegal immigrants accounted for 8 percent of all babies (in 2008), even though those immigrants are about 4 percent of the adult population.”
The United States has legal processes by which citizens of foreign nations may apply to immigrate to this country. Those processes should be followed, and the federal government, which has responsibility for enforcement of immigration laws, should stop being negligent about upholding that responsibility.