Birth rate for illegal immigrants shows rise

WASHINGTON — The number of U.S.-citizen children born to illegal immigrants has dramatically increased over the past five years from 2.7 million in 2003 to 4 million in 2008, according to a study released Tuesday.

The report by the nonpartisan, Washington-based Pew Hispanic Center also found more than a third of such children were in poverty in 2007, compared with about 18 percent of those born to either legal immigrants or U.S.-born parents. Similarly, one in four U.S.-born children of unauthorized immigrants went without health insurance in 2008, compared with 14 percent of those born to legal immigrants and 8 percent born to U.S.-born parents.

The findings suggest the impact of the unprecedented spike in illegal immigration over the past three decades will continue to be felt for years to come, even as the size of the illegal-immigrant population itself appears to have leveled off since 2006 at about 10.4 million adults and 1.5 million children. Children born on U.S. soil are automatically granted U.S. citizenship.

The study, which analyzed census statistics, found U.S.-born children now account for 73 percent of all children of illegal immigrants. And children of illegal immigrants — including those born overseas — now account for 6.8 percent of elementary- and secondary-school students nationwide and more than one in 10 students in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada and Texas.

(The Census Bureau does not ask people their immigration status. So the authors used a technique that essentially estimates the number of legal immigrants using other government records such as visas issued, then subtracts that population from the total number of foreign born counted by the census to come up with the number of illegal immigrants.)

The spike in births to unauthorized immigrants is tied largely to their relative youth compared with the general population, while many of the challenges faced by their U.S.-born children can be explained by the parents' far lower rates of education and lack of access to jobs where legal status is stringently checked. According to the study, among unauthorized immigrants ages 25 to 65, nearly a third have less than a ninth-grade education compared with 13 percent of legal immigrants and 2 percent of U.S.-born residents.

The findings also reinforced the unprecedented geographic dispersal of illegal immigrants since 1990 across southeastern states with little prior history of immigration.