Poll Watch: 61% Oppose U.S. Citizenship for Children Born to Illegal Immigrants

According to the latest Rasmussen Poll.

Several Republican senators are seeking to amend the law that grants full U.S. citizenship to children born to illegal immigrants in this country, and voters strongly support such an effort.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 61% of Likely U.S. Voters believe that a child born in the United States to a woman who is here illegally should not automatically become a U.S. citizen. That’s up slightly from last August but is the highest level of support for a change in the existing law found in five years of Rasmussen Reports surveying.

Twenty-eight percent (28%) disagree and feel that children born to illegal immigrants in this country should automatically become American citizens as is currently the practice. That’s down six points from August. Another 11% are undecided.

Easier proposed than the reality of the situation. Changing this policy now WOULD require a U.S. Constitutional Amendment which is very difficult to realize. So, this is really HOT AIR and not an attainable goal, despite the news that foreign nationals are sponsoring American birth tourism for pregnant women.

For months, officials say, the house was home to “maternity tourists,” in this case, women from China who had paid tens of thousands of dollars to deliver their babies in the United States, making the infants automatic American citizens. Officials shut down the home, sending the 10 mothers who had been living there with their babies to nearby motels.

“These were not women living in squalor — it was a well taken care of place and clean, but there were a lot of women and babies,” said Clayton Anderson, a city inspector who shut down the house on March 9. “I have never seen anything like this before. We really couldn’t determine the exact number of people living there.”

For the last year, the debate over birthright citizenship has raged across the country, with some political leaders calling for an end to the 14th Amendment, which gives automatic citizenship to any baby born in the United States. Much of the debate has focused on immigrants entering illegally from poor countries in Latin America. But in this case the women were not only relatively wealthy, but also here legally on tourist visas. Most of them, officials say, have already returned to China with their American babies.

Immigration experts say it is impossible to know precisely how widespread “maternity tourism” is. Businesses in China, Mexico and South Korea advertise packages that arrange for doctors, insurance and postpartum care. And the Marmara, a Turkish-owned hotel on the Upper East Side in New York City, has advertised monthlong “baby stays” that come with a stroller.

There are three better ways to fight illegal immigration and you can do these immediately (or as soon as Congress or state legislatures) act:

1. E-Verify for employment, hold employers accountable with jail terms for executives who allow/promote illegal employment

2. Tighten up the Southern U.S. border with Mexico and require Visas from countries in Central and South America.

3. Welfare Reform, especially in California.

Trying to change the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to outlaw natural birth citizenship to children of illegal immigrants is tilting at windmills. There are easier and quicker remedies.