Hundreds of children have been born to newly-arrived Afghans who were brought to the United States as part of President Joe Biden’s massive resettlement operation since mid-August, securing birthright citizenship in the process.
Biden started the operation in the midst of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan — bringing at least 70,000 Afghans to the country for resettlement with minimal standard vetting procedures.
Since then, Republicans and Democrats in Congress have bankrolled the operation to the sum of more than $13.3 billion in American taxpayer money.
According to data from the U.S. Army, more than 250 U.S.-born children have been delivered to newly-arrived Afghans since the end of August.
Most of the children have been born to Afghans temporarily living on various U.S. military bases which the Biden administration has converted into refugee camps until non-governmental organizations (NGOs) resettle the Afghans across 46 states.
Despite their parents having only arrived over the last few months, the U.S.-born children of Afghans are able to secure birthright American citizenship thanks to the nation’s so-called anchor baby policy.
The policy allows any foreign national, regardless of whether they have ties to the U.S. or not, to secure birthright American citizenship for their child so long as they are born within the physical perimeters of the country.
The U.S. is among one of only two nations in the developed world to have such a policy.
For Afghans, the policy is significant as many new arrivals have yet to secure visas or refugee status and thus will rely heavily on their U.S.-born child’s birthright American citizenship to obtain green cards years from now.
Former President Trump had said he was readying a plan to end birthright citizenship with an executive order that likely would have been challenged by open borders organizations, forcing the issue potentially up to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Trump, though, did not sign any such order while in office.
To date, the U.S. Supreme Court has never explicitly ruled that the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens must be granted automatic American citizenship, and a number of legal scholars dispute the idea.
Many leading conservative scholars argue the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment does not provide mandatory birthright citizenship to the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens or noncitizens, as these children were not subject to U.S. jurisdiction as that language was understood when the 14th Amendment was ratified.
Today’s anchor baby population exceeds the annual number of U.S. births. Whereas four million Americans are born every year, the anchor baby population stands at five million.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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