Anchor Babies and the Challenge of Birthright Citizenship

Leo R. Chavez

• Publisher: Stanford Briefs
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781503605268
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Educazione civica e cittadinanza

Birthright citizenship has a deep and contentious history in the United States, one often hard to square in a country that prides itself on being "a nation of immigrants." Even as the question of citizenship for children of immigrants was seemingly settled by the Fourteenth Amendment, vitriolic debate has continued for well over a century, especially in relation to U.S. race relations. Most recently, a provocative and decidedly more offensive term than birthright citizenship has emerged: "anchor babies."

With this book, Leo R. Chavez explores the question of birthright citizenship, and of citizenship in the United States writ broadly, as he counters the often hyperbolic claims surrounding these so-called anchor babies. Chavez considers how the term is used as a political dog whistle, how changes in the legal definition of citizenship have affected the children of immigrants over time, and, ultimately, how U.S.-born citizens still experience trauma if they live in families with undocumented immigrants. By examining this pejorative term in its political, historical, and social contexts, Chavez calls upon us to exorcise it from public discourse and work toward building a more inclusive nation.

1

UNDESERVING CITIZENS?

On June 22, 1974, Leonard F. Chapman Jr., commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, warned about immigrant fertility rates: “We’re very close in this country to a zero population growth through births. As we get closer to that zero growth, immigration will become an even larger percentage of the population increase.”¹ Then on July 4, 1977, U.S. News & World Report’s cover announced: “Time Bomb in Mexico: Why They’ll Be No End to the Invasion by ‘Illegals.’” The time bomb was the fertility rate of Mexican women. The relationship among immigration/invasion, demographic change, women, fertility, and children was clear and would frame public discourse on birthright citizenship and anchor babies up to the present.

Leonard Chapman and U.S. News & World Report were articulating a growing concern over increased immigration and demographic change. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 removed national origin quotas that were instituted in the 1920s, which effectively reduced immigration from southern and eastern Europe and barred immigrants from most Asian countries. The 1965 immigration law put in place a family and labor preference system for immigration.² This essentially opened immigration to almost all countries in the world. The elimination of national origin quotas removed the legal preference for Europeans in our immigration policy, which in turn initiated changes in the nation’s demographic profile.

Although the immigration law was not the only factor, 1965 marked the beginning of an increase in immigration. In 1960, Europeans accounted for 84 percent of immigrants to the United States. The ten largest immigrant groups in 1960 were primarily European: Italy (12.9%), Germany (10.2%), Canada (9.8%), United Kingdom (8.6%), Poland (7.7%), Soviet Union (7.1%), Mexico (5.9%), Ireland (3.5%), Austria (3.1%), and Hungary (2.5%). The only two non-European nationalities in this list were our neighbors, Canada and Mexico.

By 2015, Europeans accounted for only about 13 percent of immigrants. Latin America and Asia accounted for the ten largest U.S. immigrant groups: Mexico (26.9%), India (5.5%), China—not counting Hong Kong and Taiwan—(4.8%), Philippines (4.6%), El Salvador (3.1%), Vietnam (3.0%), Cuba (2.8%), Dominican Republic (2.5%), Korea (2.4%), and Guatemala (2.1%).³

In addition to a broadening of the nationality of immigrants, immigration rose to levels similar to those of the late 1800s and early 1900s (Figure 1). The foreign-born made up about 13.7 percent of the U.S. population in 2015, much higher than the 5.4 percent in 1960 and approaching the historically high 14.7 percent in 1910.⁴ The children of all these new immigrants, even those born in the United States and thus citizens, became a focus of public discourse.

Keyword searches related specifically to “birthright citizenship” and “anchor babies” in articles of the New York Times and Los Angeles Times between 1965 and 2015 resulted in 308 news articles (stories that mentioned both birthright citizenship and anchor babies are listed under anchor baby stories).⁵ These two newspapers serve as the nation’s papers of record, and both cover politics and immigration extensively. Birthright citizenship became a “hot topic” in the 1990s and has continued apace (Figure 2). The term “anchor babies” appeared in news stories in the early 2000s and surged as a media topic after 2005. So-called anchor babies were framed in negative terms, as underserving citizens out to cheat more deserving citizens. Just singling out a group of citizens as “anchor babies” called into question their citizenship, contributed to fearmongering, and fueled proposals to deny them birthright citizenship.

FIGURE 1. Immigration to the United States by Decade, 1820–2009.
Source: Yearbook of Immigration Statistics (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2012).

FIGURE 2. Newspaper Stories about Anchor Babies and Birthright Citizenship in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, 1965–2015.
Source: Author’s calculations of newspaper publications.

THE 1980S: ASSIMILATION AND CONSENT

The United States entered a major recession in the early 1980s. Immigration became a significant concern, and much of what appeared in the media was alarmist, suggesting America could not afford more immigration during a period of high unemployment. U.S. News & World Report’s April 12, 1982, cover asked, “Will U.S. Shut the Door on Immigrants?” Its March 7, 1983, cover had a photograph of a Mexican man carrying a woman across the Rio Grande into the United States, with the headline: “Invasion from Mexico: It Just Keeps Growing.”⁶ The image of the woman not so subtly suggested the “invasion” of fertile women who could have babies in the United States.

A New York Times headline on November 21, 1982, made this explicit: “Mexican Women Cross Border So Babies Can Be U.S. Citizens.”⁷ The article, set in Brownsville, Texas, across the border from Matamoros, Mexico, told the story of a 27-year-old woman who crossed the border legally to deliver her baby in Brownsville, “which is fairly typical of Mexican women, now numbering in the thousands, who are coming across the border every year to have their babies in the United States. They come, many of them, so the baby will be born an American citizen, with all the advantages that that brings.”

A letter to the editor in the New York Times on January 13, 1983, expressed anger over the story of women crossing the border to have babies. The writer took issue with the idea that these babies will have the same rights and entitlements as other citizens, “including free public education, Social Security, Medicare, voting and the right to hold public office.” Anger gave way to policy suggestions as the letter writer called for changing the Fourteenth Amendment and the principle of jus soli because “this principle is now being grossly and shamefully abused.” Citizenship, he argued, should be denied if the baby’s mother had not been in the United States for a reasonable amount of time and should be denied completely to the children of “illegal aliens.” As the writer put it, “Congress should begin the process of altering the 14th Amendment so that its intent can no longer be so mischievously perverted.”

In 1985, as the number of U.S.-born children with undocumented parents began to increase, two Yale University professors, Peter H. Schuck and Rogers M. Smith, raised the issue of birthright citizenship in their book Citizenship without Consent: Illegal Aliens in the American Polity.⁸ They questioned granting birthright citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants, arguing that the United States should move away from its principle of inclusion through birthright citizenship and replace it with citizenship by consent. The consent principle would make citizenship subject to consent, or agreement, by the nation and then, if granted, by the consent of those seeking citizenship upon reaching the age of legal majority.

Shuck and Smith’s citizenship-through-consent proposal raises significant issues. U.S.-born children denied birthright citizenship could also be denied the opportunity of citizenship when they are older if the nation or state views them as a “threat” and decides to withhold consent. The consent principle for citizenship raises the possibility that nonconsent might also be applied to U.S.-born minorities, such as Muslims today, who are out of favor or stigmatized as a threat to the nation at a particular moment. U.S.-born noncitizens could also be deportable, as recently occurred in Germany.⁹ In short, the principle of consent for citizenship could easily become a principle of exclusion. Finally, Schuck and Smith argued that the Fourteenth Amendment’s clause, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” applies only to legal immigrants and not to unauthorized immigrants.

At about the same time Shuck and Smith were questioning birthright citizenship, James O. Pace was pushing his self-published 1985 book, Amendment to the Constitution, in which he advocated repealing the Fourteenth Amendment.¹⁰ Pace would deport or deny citizenship to everyone not of western European stock:

No person shall be a citizen of the United States unless he is a non-Hispanic white of the European race, in whom there is no ascertainable trace of Negro blood, nor more than one-eighth Mongolian, Asian, Asia Minor, Middle Eastern, Semitic, Near Eastern, American Indian, Malay or other non-European or non-white blood, provided that Hispanic whites, defined as anyone with an Hispanic ancestor, may be citizens if, in addition to meeting the aforesaid ascertainable trace and percentage tests, they are in appearance indistinguishable from Americans whose ancestral home is in the British Isles or Northwestern Europe. Only citizens shall have the right and privilege to reside permanently in the United States.¹¹

Although Pace’s policy recommendations were outlandish in their breadth and call for race-based exclusions, they do show just how passionate, and fearful, some Americans were at the time about changing demographics and what they perceived as a dilution of their privileges as citizens. When Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1985 (IRCA), it included a significant increase in border controls and surveillance, employer sanctions, and an amnesty program for some undocumented immigrants. IRCA did not include anything dealing with birthright citizenship.

The fear that the children of Mexican immigrants would rather not assimilate, which would lead to a divided nation, was so prevalent at the time that U.S. News & World Report’s August 19, 1985, cover asked the question, “The Disappearing Border: Will the Mexican Migration Create a New Nation?” The magazine made clear that the threat to the United States was posed not just by immigrants but more profoundly by their children, even for generations:

Now sounds the march of new conquistadors in the American Southwest. The heirs of Cortés and Coronado are rising again in the land their forebears took from the Indians and lost to the Americans. Their movement is, despite its quiet and largely peaceful nature, both an invasion and a revolt. At the vanguard are those born here, whose roots are generations deep, who long endured Anglo dominance and rule and who are ascending within the U.S. system to take power they consider their birthright.¹²

During this time, advocates for restrictive immigration policies focused on fertility of immigrant women and the fear of demographic change. In 1986, John Tanton wrote a memo he titled “The Latin Onslaught.” Tanton, an ophthalmologist from Michigan, once president of Zero Population Growth and founder of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), warned in his memo, “Will the present majority peaceably hand over its political power to a group (Latin American immigrants) that is simply more fertile? . . . On the demographic point: Perhaps this is the first instance in which those with their pants up are going to get caught by those with their pants down!”¹³

If the 1980s public discourse focused on the children of immigrants as a problem, public discourse and congressional bills in the 1990s repeatedly advocated for the solution: to eliminate or amend the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship.

THE 1990S: THE BROWNING OF AMERICA

Beginning in 1990, the United States again was gripped by a major economic recession that held the nation at bay for the next few years. In California, the recession was exacerbated by withdrawal of federal funds for military bases and related programs. Two other issues contributed to the public’s interest in immigration. Undocumented immigration continued to grow, and demographic change was occurring such that European Americans were becoming a proportionately smaller part of the U.S. population.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, demographic change became associated with the “browning of America.” Time magazine’s April 9, 1990, cover asked, “America’s Changing Colors: What Will the U.S. Be Like When Whites Are No Longer the Majority?” Time’s answer: “The ‘browning of America’ will alter everything in society, from politics and education to industry, values and culture. . . . The deeper significance of America becoming a majority nonwhite society is what it means to the national psyche, to individuals’ sense of themselves and the nation—their idea of what it is to be American.”¹⁴

Time was prescient in its prediction that becoming a multiracial society will cause serious adjustment among whites, many of whom consider the nation as reflecting their own image. As Time put it:

While know-nothingism is generally confined to the more dismal corners of the American psyche, it seems all too predictable that during the next decades...