UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Established in 1868 with the ratification of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, birthright citizenship grants citizenship to all persons born on U.S. soil regardless of the parents' citizenship status. If birthright citizenship is ended, the number of children born without a defined legal status in the United States may reach up to 6.4 million by 2050, according to a new study by Penn State researchers published today (March 31) in the journal Demography.
The largest absolute impact of the policy change would affect Latino immigrants, who would comprise more than 90% of U.S.-born people without legal status — what the study authors call "unauthorized" for brevity — in the country by 2050. However, the undocumented Asian population would experience the largest relative growth of any other immigrant group — with 41 "unauthorized" births per 1,000 Asians without legal status, compared to 17 births per 1,000 Latinos without legal status, according to the researchers. The researchers attributed the fivefold increase in "unauthorized" Asian births to the number of Asians in the country on student and work visas whose children would no longer be granted citizenship.
"The policy ending birthright citizenship slated to be argued before the Supreme Court in April would expand the definition of an undocumented parent to someone with any kind of non-immigrant visa, like a student visa or work visa, and that's the part that would really change a lot of lives for Asian families," said Nicole Kreisberg , study co-author and assistant professor of public policy at Penn State.
Many Asian immigrants arrive to the U.S. on temporary student or work visas, and then it takes them another decade to get a green card, added study co-author Jennifer Van Hook , distinguished professor of sociology and demography at Penn State.
"We know from our prior research that about half of Asians who initially come as students end up staying permanently, and so they're coming in the middle of the family-building parts of their lives," she said, explaining that the new policy would leave their children designated as "unauthorized," or without citizenship. "These are often highly educated people contributing to our economy, and to disenfranchise their children would be a big loss for them."
To see how the policy change would impact immigrant groups, the researchers first estimated the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. by comparing immigration data from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey to legal residency data from the Department of Homeland Security. They also looked at census and immigration data from other countries, like Mexico, to deduce and adjust for the number of undocumented immigrants missing from U.S. government data.
The research team then modeled projections of the "unauthorized" and temporary nonimmigrant population in the U.S. to the year 2050, taking into account current age- and group-specific fertility, mortality and migration rates. They ran three scenarios: a status quo scenario, which defined all children born to immigrant and nonimmigrant parents as U.S. citizens, in accordance with the current law; scenario 1, which classified births as "unauthorized" if born to two undocumented parents; and scenario 2, which classified births as "unauthorized" if born to two undocumented parents, two nonimmigrant parents or a combination of the two. Scenario 2 models the language of the policy being brought before the Supreme Court, the researchers noted.
The researchers found that scenario 1 resulted in 5.3 million children being born to undocumented parents over the next 25 years, with 3 million of these children still living in the U.S. by 2050. Adding the children born to nonimmigrant parents in scenario 2 increased the number of "unauthorized" births to 6.4 million, with 3.4 million of these children staying in the country. Latinos would comprise 93% of the "unauthorized" U.S.-born population in 2050 in scenario 2, while the number of "unauthorized" Asian births would increase five-fold.
"We found that the proposed change to birthright citizenship would create an undocumented population among families who have done everything the legal way, like obtain nonimmigrant visas for work or study," said Kreisberg, who is also a co-funded faculty member of Penn State's Social Science Research Institute (SSRI).
When immigrants have had opportunities and equality before the law, they have overperformed in schooling, job outcomes, entrepreneurship, investment in new businesses and so forth, and their success helps everybody, said Van Hook, who also directs the Population Research Institute in SSRI. She noted a July 2024 report released by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which projected that the immigration surge in the first half of the 2020s would result in an $8.9 trillion boost to the country's gross domestic product over the next decade, largely from additional wages subject to payroll and income taxes.
"Thinking about the kinds of workers we need in the future given our information economy, we depend heavily on a highly educated workforce," she said. "If we put barriers up for millions of these children, we are effectively sabotaging ourselves."
The policy might also result in a brain drain, with highly skilled workers relocating to other countries before having children, the researchers said.
"Higher education pours a lot of resources into educating students, including our international students," Van Hook said. "If we're now essentially pushing them out of the country right after that investment, what are we doing? That's a wasted investment."
The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and Penn State, through its Population Research Institute, supported this research.
