Republican presidential nominee Jeb Bush has been under fire this week after using the term “anchor baby” during a conservative radio talk show to describe pregnant women who come into the United States so that they and their newborn can gain American citizenship, according to Politico.
“If there’s abuse, if people are bringing — pregnant women are coming in to have babies simply because they can do it, then there ought to be greater enforcement,” Bush said on Bill Bennett’s conservative radio show last week, Politico reported. “That’s [the] legitimate side of this. Better enforcement so that you don’t have these, you know, ‘anchor babies,’ as they’re described, coming into the country.”
On Monday, Bush defended his use of the term and further explained that he was describing Asian immigrants, rather than Latino immigrants, according to The Washington Post.
Still, the term didn’t sit well with members of the media, fellow political candidates or American immigrants, who all called out Bush for changing his stance on the “anchor baby” term, which he often said he opposed, according to The Washington Post.
Similarly, political pundits said Bush’s use of the term made him not unlike business mogul and presidential hopeful Donald Trump, who wants to rid immigrants of birthright citizenship, which is outlined in the 14th Amendment and automatically gives American-born babies citizenship and the opportunity to sponsor their parents’ citizenship after they turn 21, The Post reported.
Trump has wanted to get rid of that opportunity because he feels immigrants have taken advantage of it by sending pregnant women into the country to give birth on American soil, which will later help immigrants enter the country through family sponsors, The Post reported.
There is some fact behind both Trump's and Bush’s criticism of immigrants using birthright citizenship, according to Gretchen Carlson of Fox News. The 14th Amendment’s original intention was to offer citizenship to babies born on American soil, not to allow the influx of immigration, which appears to be the case, Carlson reported.
As Carlson points out, data from the Center of Immigration Studies found more than 700,000 of the 1.1 million immigrants who entered the United States in 2009 were family-sponsored immigrants, which means about 66 percent of immigrants obtained citizenship because their child was born on American soil, Carlson reported.
This doesn’t seem to be a slowing trend, either, as children continue to be born to immigrant parents who may or may not have legal status. According to the Pew Research Center in 2009, 79 percent of children born to at least one unauthorized immigrant parent took place in the United States.
Similarly, 7 percent of all children born in the United States had unauthorized immigrant parents — which is about 5.1 million children in total, according to Pew.
But these numbers don't necessarily mean that immigrants are rushing into the United States to have babies so they can gain citizenship, according to CNN’s Raul A. Reyes.
Reyes said the “anchor babies” term creates a false assumption about why immigrants come to the United States. Most immigrants, he wrote, come to the U.S. to join the workforce, not to give birth.
In fact, Reyes said the term "anchor babies" is a slur that dehumanizes people and “judges them based on a perception of their parents’ immigration status.”
Moving forward, Reyes hopes both Bush and Trump leave the children out of the discussion when creating policies for immigrants.
“True, illegal immigration remains a contentious issue among the conservative base,” he wrote. “But scapegoating American children is no substitute for thoughtful policy solutions.”
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Herb Scribner is a writer for Deseret News National. Send him an email at hscribner@deseretdigital.com or follow him on Twitter @herbscribner.