Story highlights Raul A. Reyes: Jeb Bush says 'anchor babies' isn't an offensive term, but Latinos disagree

He says immigrants aren't coming to the U.S. to have babies but to work

Raul A. Reyes is an attorney and member of the USA Today board of contributors. Follow him on Twitter @RaulAReyes. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN) Open mouth, insert foot. On Thursday, Jeb Bush stepped into controversy when he used the loaded term "anchor babies" to refer to the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants. In a testy exchange with reporters in New Hampshire, Bush said that he doesn't believe the expression is offensive and blamed Democrats for perpetuating the notion that it is an insult. "Do you have a better term?" he asked one reporter. "You give me a better term and I'll use it."

Raul A. Reyes

Despite his family ties to the Latino community, Bush is off base. The term "anchor baby" is a disgusting slur. It is inaccurate as well as offensive. It is dehumanizing to Latinos, immigrants and children who are as American as you and me.

The idea of an "anchor baby" is centered, in part, on the assumption that having an American-born child can protect undocumented people from deportation. The child, this line of thought goes, "anchors" a family in the United States and allows them to gain citizenship.

In fact, having a citizen child is no protection from possible deportation. In the first six months of 2011, for example, parents with U.S.-citizen children constituted 22% of deportees. Between 2010 and 2012, the United States deported nearly 205,000 parents of citizen kids. And in 2013, more than 72,000 were deported, according to The Huffington Post. (President Barack Obama's executive action plan , which is tied up in the courts, would grant temporary deportation relief to parents of children who meet certain requirements.)

Another false notion surrounding "anchor babies" is that people from foreign countries are rushing here to have children. While there has been a phenomenon known as " birth tourism " among Asian mothers who temporarily relocate to the United States to have a child, their numbers are statistically small. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 7,955 children were born to foreign residents in 2012. Meanwhile research has shown that the overwhelming majority of undocumented immigrants come to the United States to work.

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