May 2025
Repealing Birthright Citizenship Would Significantly Increase the Size of the U.S. Unauthorized Population
By Jennifer Van Hook, Michael Fix and Julia Gelatt
Editor’s Note: This short read has been updated to correct Figure 1.
Repealing birthright citizenship for U.S. children born to unauthorized immigrants or certain other noncitizens would have a contrary result from its stated aim of reducing unauthorized immigration. In fact, as new estimates from the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) and Penn State’s Population Research Institute show, repeal would significantly swell the size of the unauthorized population—now and for generations to come.
The question of birthright citizenship has emerged periodically over the years. The debate was reignited in January when President Donald Trump signed an executive order on his first day back in office to end the grant of birthright citizenship to children born to certain noncitizens. The order, which has been stayed by the courts amid questions over its constitutionality, specifies that going forward, only children born to at least one U.S.-citizen or lawful permanent resident parent would automatically acquire U.S. citizenship.
New MPI-Penn State projections show that ending birthright citizenship for U.S.-born children with parents who are either unauthorized or are temporary immigrants (or a combination of the two) would increase the unauthorized population by an additional 2.7 million by 2045 and by 5.4 million by 2075. Each year, over the next 50 years, an average of about 255,000 children born on U.S. soil would start life without U.S. citizenship based on their parents’ legal status, the research shows.
These projections, which draw on an MPI-Penn State methodology for estimating the size and basic demographic characteristics of the U.S. unauthorized immigrant population, are conservative ones. (See below for a discussion of assumptions and Box 1 for the methods used to derive these projections.)
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/news/birthright-citizenship-repeal-projections
