The GOP’s use of the term “anchor baby” was best answered by a single tweet:
While Hillary Clinton fights for comprehensive immigration reform that includes a pathway to citizenship, GOP candidates for president remain stuck in the past.
Hillary Clinton on Immigration
- Hillary Clinton supports comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship as the best way to keep families together and to make sure that every single child has the best chance to succeed.
- In the Senate, Hillary Clinton consistently voted in favor of comprehensive immigration reform and advocated for the DREAM Act on the Senate floor.
- As a Senator, Clinton introduced an amendment to reunite families separated by the immigration system. The amendment would have reclassified the spouses and minor children of lawful permanent residents as immediate relatives.
- Clinton introduced a bill to restore access to Medicaid and SCHIP benefits for legal immigrant pregnant women and children as well as legislation to expand job training for people with limited English language skills.
The GOP on Immigration
Using the phrase “anchor baby” and fighting to end birthright citizenship:
- Donald Trump: “I’ll use the word anchor baby.”
- Donald Trump made ending birthright citizenship a pillar of his immigration plan, calling it “the biggest magnet for illegal immigration.”
- Jeb Bush: “[We need] better enforcement so that you don’t have these, you know, ‘anchor babies’, as they’re described, coming into the country.”
- Ben Carson: “The 14th Amendment has been brought up recently about anchor babies, and it doesn’t make any sense to me, that people can come in here and have a baby and that baby becomes an American citizen…”
- Bobby Jindal said he is “happy to use the term” anchor baby and that “folks today are too easily offended.” [Fox News, 8/20/15]
- Mike Huckabee, according to his top immigration surrogate, proposed amending the Constitution to prevent children of undocumented immigrants from automatically receiving U.S. citizenship.
- Ted Cruz declared his support for amending the Constitution to end birthright citizenship.
- Lindsay Graham: “We should change our Constitution and say if you come here illegally and you have a child, that child’s automatically not a citizen.”
- Rand Paul introduced a resolution to amend the Constitution to ensure “a person born in the United States to illegal aliens does not automatically gain citizenship.”
- Rick Santorum: “Enticements to illegal immigration, such as birthright citizenship, should be ended.”
- Marco Rubio: “Marco Rubio, who is running for president thanks to birthright citizenship, says he is open to the idea of ending it for children who were born in the United States to foreign parents.”
- Scott Walker asked if he supports ending birthright citizenship said, “Yeah, to me it’s about enforcing the laws in this country.”
- Chris Christie: “[Birthright citizenship] may have made sense at some point in our history, but right now, we need to re-look at all that.”
- John Kasich was called a “longtime supporter” of ending birthright citizenship. [Columbus Dispatch, 11/26/10]
Opposing a pathway to citizenship:
- Jeb Bush: “Jeb Bush said his immigration reform plan would ‘fall short’ of offering a path to citizenship.”
- Donald Trump: Donald Trump said that immigrants coming from Mexico are “bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”
- Chris Christie: Chris Christie rejected “the idea of providing a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants as ‘extreme.’”
- Scott Walker: Scott Walker on a path to citizenship: “I don’t believe in amnesty.”
- Ted Cruz: Cruz: “I think a path to citizenship for those who are here illegally is profoundly unfair.”
- Rand Paul: Paul introduced an amendment to remove a pathway to citizenship from immigration reform.
- Mike Huckabee: Huckabee: “If you’re rewarding people who play outside the rules, and punish people who live within the rules, pretty soon nobody is going to play by the rules.”
- Marco Rubio: “Let me just remind everybody there is no such thing as a path to citizenship.” [The Lead with Jake Tapper, 3/19/13]