There are nearly 300,000 children of illegal aliens born in the United States every year, exceeding the total number of U.S. births in 48 states.

New wide-ranging analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies‘ Steven Camarotta reveals that there are roughly 297,000 births per year to illegal immigrants in the U.S.

The children of illegal aliens are commonly known as “anchor babies,” as they anchor their illegal alien and noncitizen parents in the U.S. and eventually are allowed to bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the country through the process known as “chain migration.”

The analysis notes that the nearly 300,000 anchor babies born every year in the U.S. exceed the total number of all U.S. births in all but two states: California and Texas. Likewise, the annual number of anchor babies born in the U.S. exceeds the number of births in 16 states plus the District of Colombia, combined.

More Illegal Aliens Giving Birth to Anchor Babies in Los Angeles than Total U.S. Births in 14 Stateshttps://t.co/yjB0VhCNMr — John Binder 👽 (@JxhnBinder) October 10, 2018

There are more than 30 times as many anchor babies born every year than the total number of children born to native-born Americans in the state of Delaware. Similarly, there are more than 22 times as many anchor babies born every year in the country than there are children born to native-born Americans in the state of South Dakota.

The anchor baby population in the U.S. is almost twice the amount of residents living in the U.S. territory of Guam and more than double the population of the U.S. Virgin Islands, where a projected 107,000 residents live.

As Breitbart News reported, in the Los Angeles, California metro area, illegal alien births make up nearly 18 percent of all births in the region. In the Las Vegas, Nevada metro area, illegal alien births account for about 17 percent of all births.

California — a sanctuary state for illegal aliens — has the largest number of illegal alien births with about 65,000 illegal alien births every year. Texas has about 51,000 illegal alien births every year, while Florida has about 16,000 illegal alien births every year.

The Supreme Court, however, has never explicitly ruled that the children of illegal aliens must be granted automatic citizenship and many legal scholars dispute the idea. There are at least 4.5 million anchor babies in the U.S. — exceeding the annual roughly 4 million American babies born every year.

Many leading conservative scholars argue the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not provide mandatory birthright citizenship to the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens or noncitizens, as these children are not subject to U.S. jurisdiction as that language was understood when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified.