Births to Legal and Illegal Immigrants in the U.S.
A look at health insurance coverage among new mothers by legal status at the state and local level
By Steven A. Camarota, Karen Zeigler, and Jason Richwine on October 9, 2018
An Excel spreadsheet showing births by state and metro area is available here.
Steven A. Camarota is the director of research and Karen Zeigler is a demographer at the Center. Jason Richwine, PhD, is an independent public policy analyst based in Washington, D.C., and a contributing writer at National Review.
One of the most obvious and enduring impacts of immigration occurs through immigrants' children. Long after immigrants pass on, their descendants will continue to shape the political, economic, and cultural life in the receiving society. Examining births to immigrants is thus a way of measuring the scale of immigration and its impact on the United States. Because the United States automatically awards citizenship to all persons born in the country, including those born to temporary visitors or illegal immigrants, the overwhelming majority of these children will stay in the United States.
This analysis looks at births to immigrants based on an analysis of the Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS). It provides a good picture of births to immigrant mothers, including the mothers' demographic characteristics.1 These characteristics allow us to estimate the likely number of births to illegal immigrants nationally, as well as births by state and by large metropolitan area.
https://cis.org/Report/Births-Legal-and-Illegal-Immigrants-US
