By Al Knight, Denver Post, September 11, 2002
The term "anchor baby" is unfamiliar to most Americans, but it nicely describes one of the more troubling aspects of American immigration policy.
Put simply, an anchor baby is the offspring of an illegal immigrant who, under current legal interpretation, becomes a U.S. citizen at birth and, in turn, is the means by which parents and relatives can also obtain citizenship for themselves by using the family reunification features of immigration law.
It's estimated there may be as many as 200,000 anchor babies born each year in the U.S. No single agency keeps track, but there is abundant, if fragmented, evidence that births are not limited to areas near the Mexican border.
In a recent year in Colorado, the state's emergency Medicaid program paid an estimated $30 million in hospital and physician delivery costs for about 6,000 illegal immigrant mothers. And the Nashville Tennessean reported last year that the Metro General Hospital in Davidson County had recorded 511 births during a one-year period, two-thirds of them to illegal immigrants.
...Friends of Immigration Law Enforcement, claims, "There is a huge and growing industry in Asia that arranges tourist visas for pregnant woman so they can fly to the United States and give birth to an American."
Although the exact number of such births is unknown, what is known is that, except for a limited exception applying to children of diplomats, every child born on U.S. soil currently earns what is called "birthright citizenship."
The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads, in part, "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."
That same amendment also says, "The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."
Congress, of course, has done no such thing, although legislation has been introduced that would deny citizenship to a child whose mother is "neither a citizen or national of the United States nor admitted to the United States as a lawful permanent resident."...
No government agency keeps track of anchor births; hospitals rarely keep accurate information on immigration status, public schools and other agencies are virtually forbidden from tracking immigration status, and so the public has no clue as to the real effects of current policy. Because detailed information is lacking, it is easy enough to those who favor the status quo to simply announce that the effects are completely benign.
But saying it doesn't make it so, does it?
Al Knight is a member of the Denver Post editorial board. His column appears Wednesday and Sunday.