Acting United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Ken Cuccinelli says there is no Constitutional Amendment needed to end the nation’s birthright citizenship, whereby millions of illegal aliens have been able to secure their U.S.-born children American citizenship.
During the Christian Science Monitor‘s breakfast with Cuccinelli, the acting director said he does not believe that an amendment to the Constitution is necessary for the U.S. to end its birthright citizenship policy.
“I do not, at least I have a belief on it, that I do not believe you need an amendment to the Constitution,” Cuccinelli said. “I think the question is ‘Do you need congressional action or can the executive act on their own?'”
To date, the U.S. Supreme Court has never explicitly ruled that the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens must be granted automatic American citizenship, and a number of legal scholars dispute the idea.
Many leading conservative scholars argue the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment does not provide mandatory birthright citizenship to the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens or noncitizens, as these children are not subject to U.S. jurisdiction as that language was understood when the 14th Amendment was ratified.
For a year, President Trump has signaled that he has reviewed signing an executive order to end birthright citizenship, otherwise known as the “anchor baby policy,” as the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens are often referred to as “anchor babies.”
Today, there are at least 4.5 million anchor babies in the U.S., exceeding the annual roughly four million American babies born every year and costing American taxpayers about $2.4 billion every year to subsidize hospital costs. Every year, about 300,000 anchor babies are born in the country and as of June, there has been an average of about 124,000 anchor babies born this year.
The sanctuary state of California is home to at least 1.2 million anchor babies under the age of 18, as Breitbart News reported. This is roughly twice the total population of Wyoming. The total of anchor babies under the age of 18 in ten U.S. states is more than four times the population of Boston, Massachusetts.
In total, there are now an unprecedented 62 million immigrants and their U.S.-born children living across the country, as Breitbart News has previously reported. As of 2017, there were 17.1 million U.S.-born minor children of immigrants in the country.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.