AURORA, CO - DECEMBER 01: An immigrant from Mexico kisses her four day-old son during a newborn care class at a community health center for low-income patients on December 1, 2009 in Aurora, Colorado. The Metro Community Provider Network (MCPN), which has 11 health centers in the Denver area, has seen a 138 percent increase in patients during the last year of recession. Non-profit community health centers such as MCPN could play a major role nationally if health care reform is passed, with increased subsidies from the federal government as well as millions of newly-insured low-income citizens seeking care. Health coverage for immigrants remains a contentious issue in the reform debate. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images) (2009 Getty Images)
The number of children born to undocumented immigrants living in the United States has declined, according to new study released by the Pew Research Center.
According to the new report, released Friday, about 295,000 babies were born to undocumented immigrant in 2013 - making up about 8 percent of the 3.9 million U.S. births that year. This was a decline of about 15,000 from the year before and a decline of about 75,000 from the historical high in 2007.
The study, which analyzed the latest official birth statistics available, found that the percentage of babies born to undocumented immigrant mothers has remained relatively unchanged since 2003.
From the start of the 1980s until the mid-2000s, the number of babies born to the undocumented increased abruptly, says the study, whose publication coincides with the debate being waged by several Republican presidential candidates about children born in the United States of parents without papers.
If in 1985 the number of babies born to undocumented moms stood at 45,000, or 1 percent of the total, in 2006 the number hit historic heights with 370,000, or 9 percent, but since then the number has dropped, the study says.
Pew estimates that in March 2013, some 11.3 million undocumented immigrants were living in the United States, or 4 percent of the total population.
The research center also says that in 2012 there were 4.5 million children born in the U.S.A. whose parents lacked papers, as well as 775,000 minors in the same undocumented state as their parents.
The U.S. Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment grants birthright citizenship to anyone born in this country, but recently some politicians like Donald Trump have questioned that right because, they assert, it is a magnet for illegal immigration.
Based on reported by EFE.
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