A Cato Institute pollster says the United States’ birthright citizenship policy — which rewards the children of illegal aliens with automatic U.S. citizenship — is “core to American identity.”

Last week, President Trump announced he is readying an executive order to end birthright citizenship in the U.S. The unilateral move would carry the country into the future on the issue, putting the nation more in line with similar Western countries. Currently, the U.S. and Canada are the only developed nations in the world that offer unrestricted birthright citizenship.

The children of illegal aliens are commonly known as “anchor babies,” as they anchor their illegal alien and noncitizen parents in the U.S. There are at least 4.5 million anchor babies in the country, a population that exceeds the total number of annual American births.

During an interview with The Hill, Cato Institute pollster Emily Ekins said birthright citizenship is at the “core” of Americans’ identity as a nation and claimed the policy has helped immigrants assimilate.

“I think it’s core to American identity to embrace this idea of birthright citizenship,” Ekins, director of polling at the Cato Institute, told Hill.TV’s Jamal Simmons on “What America’s Thinking.” [Emphasis added]

“Many people believe that this is why America has been so tremendous at assimilating so many immigrants from different places,” she said. [Emphasis added]

The Cato Institute, which is partially founded by the billionaire, pro-mass immigration Koch brothers, has long advocated for hemispheric open borders.

Most recent polling on birthright citizenship reveals that while likely voters are split on the issue, more than 7-in-10 Republican voters say the policy should be ended, Breitbart News reported.

Last week, the billionaire Koch brothers’ network of organizations announced that they opposed ending the anchor baby policy, with an organization official saying ending birthright citizenship is “against our principles.”

Every year, nearly 300,000 anchor babies are born in the U.S., exceeding the total number of all U.S. births in all but two states: California and Texas. Likewise, the annual number of anchor babies born in the U.S. exceeds the number of births in 16 states plus the District of Colombia, combined.

There are more than 30 times as many anchor babies born every year than the total number of children born to native-born Americans in the state of Delaware. Similarly, there are more than 22 times as many anchor babies born every year in the country than there are children born to native-born Americans in the state of South Dakota.

The anchor baby population in the U.S. is almost twice the amount of residents living in the U.S. territory of Guam and more than double the population of the U.S. Virgin Islands, where a projected 107,000 residents live.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.