Those opposed to giving automatic U.S. citizenship to those born on U.S. soil — even if their parents are not in America legally — often refer to the children as “anchor babies.”

Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, wants to end that birthright status. King has tried for years, with little success, and he introduced new legislation early this year.

King and those who agree with him gained far less traction before the administration of President Donald Trump.

Under Trump, King celebrated with a toast on Twitter after a “dreamer” — a child immigrant granted immigration leeway by former President Barack Obama — was deported by Trump’s Border Patrol.


King’s legislation would restrict automatic citizenship at birth to those with at least one parent who is a citizen, permanent resident, or active duty military member. King’s bill reflects concerns that unauthorized immigrants — and, in some cases, pregnant tourists — come to the U.S. to give birth so that their children will be U.S. citizens.

A debate over the term “anchor babies,” and the underlying issue that it represents, has existed for years. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was criticized in 2015 for using the term during his unsuccessful bid for the presidency.

Raoul Lowery Contreras wrote in the North County Times in 2007 that the term “anchor baby” is as derogatory as someone using the “N-word.”


“These children are natural-born United States citizens,” Lowery Contreras wrote. “They are because the Constitution of the United States says so, and says so unequivocally. Those who use ‘anchor babies’ are ignorant of the Constitution or can’t read and understand it or reject it for specious reasons.”

Those who use the term fear that U.S. citizen children born to unauthorized immigrants facilitate more immigration by family members.

“The lure of getting free prenatal care, delivery and follow-up care is huge,” wrote Stephen Bustanoby of Vista to the Union-Tribune in 2010. “Now, you’ve got more family members lured to sneak in to take advantage of the new citizens status. Remove the enticement to sneak in the country (along with jobs), you remove the motivation.”

America’s citizenship policy for babies born here is not the norm, internationally. Only about 20 percent of countries in the world automatically grant citizenship to those born in their borders, according to data from the CIA World Factbook.


That’s 40 out of 196 countries in the Factbook. Most countries with birthright citizenship are in North and South America, including the U.S. and Mexico. In Europe, Ireland is the only country that automatically grants birthright citizenship. Luxembourg will do it only if the person is not able to obtain citizenship from another country through descent.

“These are places that wanted to populate their territories with people, with the ‘right kind of people,’ not the people who were already here necessarily, but the people who were immigrating,” said John Torpey, a professor of sociology at The City University of New York, when asked why countries with birthright citizenship laws are so heavily concentrated in the Americas.

Historically, citizenship laws have been based on one of two ideas: citizenship by birth, known as jus soli or law of the soil, and citizenship by descent, known as jus sanguinis or law of the blood.

Torpey said some consider jus soli to have an advantage because it’s more focused on civics than ethnicity.


“I think there’s something to that,” Torpey said via phone.

“The country is not conceived of as a big family,” he added. “It’s conceived of as a nation of fellow citizens wherever their roots may lie.”

While a country’s laws are generally based on one of the two models, over time many countries have taken on elements of both, according to Everard Meade, director of the Trans Border Institute at the University of San Diego.

The foundation of Mexico’s citizenship laws is jus sanguinis, but today anyone born in Mexico is considered a citizen. Germany, another country whose system is based on citizenship by descent, now has a law allowing the children of noncitizens who have been permanent residents for at least eight years to automatically get citizenship at birth.


Most countries, including those that grant citizenship by birth, have laws that give citizenship based on descent, though they vary extensively in descent requirements, according to the Factbook.

Some require that one parent was a citizen of the country while others require that both parents were citizens. Some countries, including Bahrain, Iran and Somalia, specify that the citizen parent must be the father. Two countries, Algeria and Djibouti, only grant citizenship through the mother.

Only one country — the Holy See, home of the Vatican — does not allow citizenship by descent, according to the Factbook.

When the U.S. was formed, its founders did not include a definition for citizenship in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.


“That’s really important because it was a very intentional oversight,” Meade said. “European constitutions of the time and European notions of what it meant to be a subject or citizen were very codified and stratified. That founding generation of the United States wanted to reject that.”

The first naturalization law, passed in March 1790, allowed for children born abroad to U.S. citizen parents to be considered natural born citizens. It also allowed “any Alien being a free white person” who lived in the U.S. for two years to become a citizen.

The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, clarified that all those born or naturalized in the U.S. are citizens. That amendment made it possible for recently emancipated slaves to be considered citizens, though many were denied privileges associated with citizenship for the century that followed.

San Diego immigration attorney Regina Knoll grew up in Austria, which doesn’t automatically grant citizenship to those born in the country. She said most people living in Austria have citizenship somewhere, but that there are people born in Austria who are not citizens of any country. They’re called “stateless” people.


Knoll said via email that “is a difficult situation to be in.”

Knoll estimated that there are between 2,000 and 3,000 stateless people living in Austria, which had an overall population of about 8.5 million in 2013, according to data from the Austrian embassy in Washington, D.C.

“Stateless people really have no voice and aren’t represented politically in any meaningful way,” she said. “Those who manage to get work authorization and are legally integrated in the labor market are still impacted because their status is uncertain and they cannot travel outside of the country.”

People born stateless in Austria usually have to wait until they are 18 years old to apply for citizenship, Knoll said, and they are not guaranteed to get it.


Austria has ongoing political debates about whether to change its citizenship restrictions, Knoll said, and those debates are “highly partisan.”

Those who advocate for keeping strict jus sanguinis laws “like the idea of the country being able to tightly control who can become a citizen and who can’t,” she said.


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