Unauthorized immigrants in the US are having fewer babies
About 275,000 babies were born to unauthorized immigrant parents in the US in 2014—about 7% of the four million US births that year—according to analysis by the Pew Research Center. That’s a fall from 295,000 in 2013 and 330,000 in 2009.
With the presidential election only days away, the figures reveal a marked difference from the rhetoric of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who insists that immigrants are entering the US at a “record pace” and having “anchor babies” to stay on American soil.
The US Constitution’s 14th Amendment, adopted in 1868, grants automatic citizenship to anyone born in the US. Most Americans (60%), when surveyed in 2015, opposed the idea of changing the Constitution to end “birthrate citizenship,” but some Republican politicians, including Trump and Jeb Bush, argue the rule attracts illegal immigration.
The estimated number of unauthorized immigrants in the US has actually dropped since 2007. In 2014, about 11.1 million unauthorized immigrants lived in the US (3.5% of the nation’s total population). They accounted for a higher share of births, according to the Pew Research Center because the immigrant population overall (legal and unauthorized) includes a higher share of women in their childbearing years and has higher birthrates than the overall US population.
While doctors in border towns confirm that some women go to the US to give birth in a more stable environment, the story of immigrant fertility is more complicated than the political rhetoric suggests.
Simone Bertoli, in his IZA World of Labor article about the influence of return migration on fertility in home countries, reminds us that most migration is in fact temporary in nature. Different fertility norms can therefore be transferred across borders: “The usual scenario is one wherein migrants move from a relatively low-income country with a high fertility norm to a relatively high-income country where women tend to have fewer children. When there, migrants improve their own economic condition by gaining more skills and/or making more money. They also have fewer children than they would have, had they not migrated.”
Below-replacement fertility rates are also a cause of concern in some countries, making pension plans that rely on population growth difficult or impossible to sustain. Delia Furtado has written about the effects of immigrant labor on the work-family decisions of native-born women. Because immigrants are typically of working age and tend to have larger families than natives, policymakers can use immigration, at least temporarily, as a way to alleviate below-replacement fertility rates. Large immigrant inflows have also been found to increase the availability and reduce the costs of childcare and household services. That can either free high-skilled native women to increase their labor supply or alternatively induce them to have more children.
Related articles:
Does return migration influence fertility at home?, by Simone Bertoli
Immigrant labor and work-family decisions of native-born women, by Delia Furtado
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