WASHINGTON, Aug. 11 (UPI) -- While illegal immigrants are only 4 percent of the U.S. population, they produced 8 percent of the children born in 2008, a report released Wednesday said.
About 7 percent of children under 18 living in the United States have parents who are undocumented, the Pew Hispanic Center said. The vast majority of those children, 79 percent, were U.S.-born and entitled to citizenship.
The 14th Amendment, adopted after the Civil War to ensure the descendants of black slaves could not be denied citizenship, gives that right to anyone born within U.S. borders. Some immigration critics are now calling for repeal, arguing that people who enter the country illegally are deliberately having children in the hope that will increase their chance of staying.
Undocumented immigrants tend to have disproportionately more children because they tend to be young and to have larger families, the report said.
The report, "Unauthorized Immigrants and Their U.S.-born Children," is based on data from the U.S. Census March 2009 Current Population Survey.
