Immigration Report: No Rush Across Border to Give Birth

USA Today reported that: Republican lawmakers in Congress and in more than a dozen state legislatures are trying to alter the interpretation of the 14th Amendment so that the children of illegal immigrants born in the USA are no longer granted citizenship. When announcing a plan for state legislation, a group led by Pennsylvania state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe claimed "hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens are crossing U.S. borders to give birth and exploit their child" to obtain citizenship. Critics of those legislative efforts are pointing to a new report by the Pew Hispanic Center that found a vast majority of illegal immigrants who had children in the USA in 2010 had entered the country several years earlier. The report found that 350,000 babies were born in the U.S. between March 2009 and March 2010 to at least one illegal immigrant parent. Of those parents, 91% arrived before 2008. "It's real concrete data that I think destroys this notion that immigrant women are crossing the border illegally and having babies," said Angela Kelley of the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank.