The United States-born children of illegal aliens and temporary visa-holders, commonly referred to as “anchor babies,” are benefiting hugely from American taxpayer-funded welfare, the New York Times admits.
In a piece detailing President Donald Trump’s goals to preserve the nation’s social safety net for American citizens, the Times admits that anchor babies — who are rewarded birthright American citizenship even as their parents have no legitimate ties to the United States — are major welfare beneficiaries whose parents will be impacted by such policy changes.
“Immigration experts and advocates for immigrant rights say the changes would instead largely be felt by children who are U.S. citizens but whose parents are undocumented or immigrants who are authorized to live in the United States, such as refugees and people granted asylum,” the Times reports:
Twelve percent of American children, or about nine million people, are citizens with at least one noncitizen parent. Children with at least one immigrant parent are twice as likely to live in poverty than those with native-born parents, according to a 2022 report by researchers at the Boston University School of Social Work.
…
Some of the most substantial changes would come with the tax bill, a centerpiece of Mr. Trump’s economic agenda that House Republicans narrowly passed on Thursday. If approved by the Senate, the package would boost the child tax credit to as much as $2,500, but limit its availability to parents with Social Security numbers. [Emphasis added]
One of Trump’s first executive orders authorized federal agencies to examine all routes through which illegal aliens could be accessing welfare programs and ensure that such routes are eliminated so that the social safety net is protected for Americans.
Research from 2023 conducted by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) underscored how the illegal alien parents of anchor babies collect millions in welfare solely because their child or children were given birthright citizenship.
“The high use of welfare by illegal immigrant-headed households may seem implausible,” CIS researchers stated in their findings. “However, there are several things to consider: First, more than half of all illegal immigrant households have one or more U.S.-born children.”
Today, close to 20 million illegal aliens reside in the United States, while about 250,000 anchor babies are delivered in American hospitals every year.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
Wednesday on Fox Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) discussed her effort to end so-called birthright citizenship.
The Tennessee Republican has a bill under consideration in the Senate that would end what she said had led to an industry advertised worldwide.
“You say ICE arrests are keeping Tennesseans safe, as crime rates are on the decline,” host Maria Bartiromo said. “You also have a new bill banning the birth tourism loophole used by thousands of foreigners every year. Tell us about it.”
Blackburn replied, “Yes, indeed. Banning this birthright tourism is important to do. You have brokers who are advertising and pushing for people in countries like Russia and China, and women, when they are pregnant, they can pay a fee to the broker, come into the U.S., live in a housing that is provided for them, have the baby, get the birth certificate, Social Security number, go back to their country, send the child here for education as a U.S. citizen, and then when that child hits age 21, they can begin the chain migration.”
“Now, we know that there are at least 33,000 births per year that take place under this program, and we also know that this is an industry that is making tens of millions of dollars every year,” she continued. “We need to shut it down, and we need to eliminate this ability to exercise this birthright tourism. Our citizenship is not for sale to individuals that are doing this. I mean, we have our military that is hard fought and hard won these battles to keep us a free nation.”
Universal birthright citizenship “isn’t required by the 14th Amendment’s text or historical context,” Senior Legal Fellow at the Heritage Foundation Amy Swearer assesses in a video released by PragerU on Monday.
“It’s inconsistent with the earliest legal interpretations of the amendment, and it isn’t compelled by Supreme Court precedent,” Swearer says.
Birthright citizenship has become a major battle for the Trump administration after President Donald Trump signed an executive order immediately after taking office to end birthright citizenship for the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens — a policy once also opposed by Democrats. About 250,000 anchor babies are born every year in the United States, anchoring their illegal alien parents in the country.
On May 15, Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) argued to the Supreme Court that lower courts have gone far beyond their jurisdiction by blocking the order, while Soros-backed CASA Inc. and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project argued that the president does not have the authority to end birthright citizenship.
With this ongoing legal battle as a backdrop, Swearer breaks down the historical context of birthright citizenship in the nearly six-minute PragerU video. Swearer poses that the question underlying the issue of birthright citizenship is whether the Constitution grants citizenship to anyone born in the United States, “even the children of people who have entered the country illegally, or the children or foreign tourists who owe our country no allegiance.”
Swearer points the the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States…”
“Case closed, right? Not so fast,” she says. “The key phrase here is ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’ It creates a second condition for birthright citizenship beyond merely being born on American soil. But it also raises another question: who is born subject to U.S. jurisdiction?” [Emphasis added]
“To answer that question, we need some historical context,” she explains. “The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, just three years after the end of the Civil War. Its purpose was to rectify the infamous 1857 Supreme Court decision, Dred Scott v. Sanford, in which the court declared that black Americans were not and could never be citizens, even after slavery was abolished. In 1865, Dred Scott technically remained the law of the land. Black Americans were left in limbo. They were no longer slaves, but they still were not citizens. The 14th Amendment resolved the issue — once and for all, these newly freed slaves and their descendants were certainly born subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. This had been their home for generations. If they were not American citizens, to which other nation did they still belong?” [Emphasis added].
“So while the 14th Amendment resolved the issue as it related to race, its authors would’ve been shocked to learn that we now interpret these words to make citizens of virtually anyone born on U.S. soil under all circumstances,” she continues.
Swearer goes onto to cite the 1875 treatise of Yale Law Professor William C. Robinson, who explained that the 14th Amendment grants citizenship only to those born within the jurisdiction and allegiance of the United States, “a condition that requires, at a minimum, lawful permanent residence in this country,” she said.
“This was also the original understanding of the federal government,” Swearer explains.
Swearer cites several examples of how the federal government has previously interpreted the 14th Amendment in citizenship cases:
In 1885, for example, the State Department rejected the citizenship claim of a man named Richard Greer. Yes, Greer had been born in Ohio 18 years earlier, but his German parents never intended to stay in the United States and returned with their son to Germany shortly after his birth because Chrysler’s parents did not owe the United States political allegiance. Their son wasn’t born subject to its jurisdiction, at least not within the meaning of the 14th Amendment citizenship clause.
Similarly, in 1890, the Justice Department considered the citizenship claim of a child born to one Mary Devereux, a pregnant Irish woman being held on a ship in New York Harbor. While awaiting immigration approval, Devereaux left the ship for medical treatment and subsequently gave birth in a New York hospital. Authorities later denied her immigration application because Devereaux wasn’t eligible for lawful admission to the U.S. Her U.S. born daughter was not recognized as a U.S. citizen. Both mother and child were sent back to Ireland.
Swearer also references the 1898 Supreme Court case United States v. Wong surrounding the question of birthright citizenship:
Kmar Wong was born and raised in San Francisco, the son of Chinese immigrants. In 1895, after a short trip to China, Wong returned to the U.S., only to be detained by authorities and threatened with deportation. Wong sued, arguing that he was an American citizen by birth. The Supreme Court agreed. While this decision is often cited as proof that the 14th Amendment mandates universal birthright citizenship, it proves nothing of the sort. Just as the amendment was meant to undo the immoral Dred Scott decision, the Wong decision was meant to undo the immoral Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
That law prohibited immigrants of Chinese descent from becoming American citizens, no matter how long they lawfully lived, worked, and raised their families here. Wong’s parents were what we might today call lawful permanent residents. San Francisco was their home, and according to the court, Congress could prevent lawful Chinese immigrants from becoming naturalized citizens, but it could not subject their U.S. born and raised children to perpetual alien status because of their race.
“Why then, are so many so confident in their assertion that universal birthright citizenship is established Constitutional law? Maybe a better question would be, what constitution are they talking about?” Swearer ultimately concludes.
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.
The nine judges on the Supreme Court showed little consensus as they grilled government lawyers about the costs and benefits of lower judges imposing nationwide restraining orders on President Donald Trump’s reformist polices, including his update of birth citizenship policies.
Trump’s lawyers argued that the many national restraining orders abort the evolution of courtroom and public debates on the issues, and they also block administration planning for how their electoral mandates should be implemented.
The injunctions — which are often imposed by singular partisan judges — should be narrowed to cover just the plaintiffs in each case so that major issues can democratically “percolate” through the multiple courts, the public, and the agencies, said John Sauer, the U.S. solicitor general.
“Percolation of novel, sensitive constitutional issues is a merit of our system,” Sauer said. “It is not a bad feature of the system.”
If nationwide blocks are needed, they can be set via additional class-action lawsuits by people throughout the nation, he added.
The Department of Justice did not ask the Supreme Court to decide the birth-citizenship issue because a “fast and furious” process would stymie the national debate, Sauer said. The courtroom debate on birthright citizenship is expected in 2026.
The judges “signaled that they may try to find a middle ground, perhaps by issuing guidance that would allow such temporary blocks only for some kinds of cases, or by requesting more briefing on the merits of the underlying executive order,” said the New York Times.
Since January, more than 40 nationwide injunctions have been dropped by mostly Democrat-picked judges on Trump’s campaign promises, including many on his mandate to enforce the nation’s immigration laws. The birthright citizenship reform, for example, has been blocked by three injunctions in three appeals courts.
Justice Clarence Thomas seems to agree with the White House, by noting that the United States had “survived” the absence of national junctions until the 1960s.
Opponents of the proposed citizenship update said curbs on nationwide injunctions would create chaos. Local injunctions would create inconsistencies and bureaucratic costs in various states, say those activists, many of whom supported the lawless, chaotic, and impoverishing inflow of almost 10 million southern migrants during President Joe Biden’s administration.
The opponents include lawyers for 22 Democrat-run states, nearly all of whom welcomed Biden’s law-breaking migration.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh raised the practical problem of differing jurisdictions by asking the government: “What do hospitals do with a newborn? What do states do with a newborn?”
Those issues can be planned out and resolved if the issue is allowed to “percolate” without a nationwide injunction, Sauer responded.
Left-leaning judges suggested the White House would push past local legal defeats if the court decides to curb national injunctions. “Your argument seems to turn our justice system, in my view at least, into a catch me if you can kind of regime … where everybody has to have a lawyer and file a lawsuit in order for the government to stop violating people’s rights,” said Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
But Sauer argued that her concerns could be resolved through class-action suits.
