anchor baby

English

Noun

anchor baby (plural anchor babies)

1. (US, derogatory, offensive) A child born to noncitizen parents in the United States or another country that grants birthright citizenship (cf. jus soli), and who, as a citizen, can provide immigration benefits to relatives.
   • 2009, Daniel Sheehy, Fighting Immigration Anarchy, page 63:

     In the US each year, hundreds of thousands of anchor babies are born to illegal-alien mothers.

   • 2010, Mike McPheters, Cartels and Combinations:

     I suppose you're going to tell me all about the stupidity of the gringos. By the way, you're one of them, anchor baby. Once your folks swam the river and had you over here, you started getting all the freebies, right?

   • 2011, David Carraturo, Cameron Nation: Going All-In to Save His Country, page 201:

     […] scenes of an ambulance let through the Tijuana-San Diego border and a pregnant senorita emerging to give birth to her anchor baby.

   • 2014, Marilyn J. Coleman, Lawrence H. Ganong, editors, The Social History of the American Family: An Encyclopedia, SAGE Publications, →ISBN:

     […] anchor babies remains a divisive issue surrounding illegal immigration in the United States.

   • 2020 March 16, Alexandra Villarreal, “'Anchor babies': the 'ludicrous' immigration myth that treats people as pawns”, in The Guardian‎^[1], →ISSN:

     When Donald Trump launched his campaign for the 2016 presidential election, his signature policy agenda around immigration often leaned into the “anchor baby” fallacy. Part of his platform included ending birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, and Trump called for deporting such families.

Synonyms

• passport baby (Canada)

Translations

anchor baby

• Danish: ankerbarn n
• Finnish: ankkurilapsi (fi)
• German: Ankerkind n
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: ankerbarn n

  Nynorsk: ankerbarn n

• Swedish: ankarbarn n

See also

• birth tourism