A new report says the number of babies born to women in the United States illegally is falling.
Such births accounted for 8 percent of total U.S. births in 2013, according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.
The issue has been in the spotlight in recent months, with Donald Trump and other Republican candidates for president calling such children “anchor babies,” a term considered derogatory, and calling for an end to automatic citizenship for children born to immigrants in the country illegally. They say the practice encourages illegal immigration.
According to the Pew report, about 295,000 such babies were born in 2013. That was a decline from a peak of 370,000 in 2007. The downward trend echoes the overall drop in illegal immigration in recent years, which has been driven largely by a decrease in the number of immigrants illegally crossing the border from Mexico.
The population of immigrants illegally in the country dropped about 1 million during the 2007-09 recession and has remained stable since.
“When the population went down, the births went down,” said D’Vera Cohn, a co-author of the Pew report.
The high birth rate to immigrants can be explained by the differing demographics of the American-born and the foreign-born populations, Cohn said. The immigrant group has a higher share of women of childbearing age, she said.
“In general, immigrants tend to be younger,” Cohn said. “They are the people who are willing to get up and leave and take the risk of going to another country, legally or not.”
Overall, the U.S. birth rate has fallen to a record low in recent years, largely because of a decline in births to immigrants, according to Pew.
Even as the number of births to immigrants declines, the issue has been getting extra attention in recent months.
The 14th Amendment to the Constitution grants automatic citizenship to anyone born in the U.S. Conservative politicians have suggested different interpretations of the amendment in recent years and want to end birthright citizenship.
The controversy reached a peak this summer when Trump demanded a repeal of birthright citizenship as a part of his plan to curb illegal immigration. He and other Republican candidates for president, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, drew criticism from immigrant advocates and Democrats including Hillary Clinton for using the phrase “anchor babies” to describe the motives of immigrant mothers who give birth after traveling to the U.S. Although Bush used that term, he has said he does not support an end to birthright citizenship.
According to a separate report from Pew, in 2011, 57 percent of Americans opposed changing the constitution to end birthright citizenship, and 39 percent favored such a change.
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