About 250,000 babies were born to unauthorized immigrant parents in the United States in 2016, the latest year for which information is available, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of government data. This represents a 36% decrease from a peak of about 390,000 in 2007. The analysis follows President Donald Trump’s announcement that his administration may seek to end “birthright citizenship.”
The estimate is for any birth for which at least one parent was unauthorized. In the 1980s the annual number of these births was about 50,000. It rapidly grew in the 1990s. This was due in part to large numbers of women who crossed the border illegally and joined their male partners who had been given legal status due to the immigration act of 1986. Also, the total numbers of unauthorized entries and visa overstays in the U.S. grew greatly until the 2008 recession.
The number of babies born to unauthorized immigrant parents represented about 6% of the 4.0 million total births in the U.S. in 2016, compared with 9% of all births in 2007
From Pew Research