Health & Welfare | Daily Report

Josh Hallett/FlickrImmigrants become citizens at a naturalization ceremony in Walt Disney World in 2009.

The undocumented population would grow by at least 44 percent over the next 40 years – to 16 million people – if American-born children of illegal immigrants were denied birthright citizenship, according to a report released yesterday by a nonpartisan research group. 

The Migration Policy Institute found that "a self-perpetuating class of unauthorized immigrants" would continue for generations if the proposed Birthright Citizenship Act, introduced last year by Rep. Nathan Deal, R-Ga., were enacted. 

The bill would deny birthright citizenship, granted under the 14th Amendment, to children of illegal immigrants. An estimated 340,000 babies – or 8 percent of all newborns in the country – were born to illegal immigrants in 2008. 

Supporters say the proposal would help curb illegal immigration – an argument made notorious this summer by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who suggested people illegally enter the country for the express purpose of giving birth to a U.S. citizen. 

But the institute's analysis found repealing birthright citizenship would increase the undocumented population: In 2050, there would be at least 4.7 million illegal immigrants who were born in the country – 1 million of whom whose parents were both American-born.

There would be as many as 24 million illegal immigrants if legal status were denied to children born to at least one undocumented parent. If birthright citizenship policies remain the same, so will the number of illegal immigrants – about 11 million, the study found.

A growing illegal immigrant population is "one of the concerns that I have with changing the citizenship rules without fixing immigration first," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a research group in Washington that supports reduced immigration. "It's unsustainable."

But even if all new illegal immigration stopped this year, repealing birthright citizenship would still "generate a large U.S.-born unauthorized population that has the potential to grow over time," Jennifer Van Hook, the report's principal author, said in a statement.

Most of the declines in the illegal immigrant population would be among the foreign-born, the study said. The number of American-born illegal immigrants would drop by 66 percent and by 37 percent in subsequent generations.

The analysis is based on current population estimates by the Department of Homeland Security, and existing marriage patterns and fertility, mortality and migration rates among illegal immigrants. It does not consider how changing economic factors or immigration enforcement could affect the population.

Illegal immigration has slowed since 2007 amid the economic downturn and increased border enforcement. California, where 42 percent of all illegal immigrants in the country lived in 1990, was home to 23 percent of the undocumented population in 2009.