section_path: Profile and demographics/Children
section_name: Children
paragraph_text: Children
  
  The Pew Hispanic Center determined that according to an analysis of Census Bureau data about 8 percent of children born in the United States in 2008—about 340,000—were offspring of illegal immigrants. (The report classifies a child as offspring of illegal immigrants if either parent is unauthorized.) In total, 4 million US-born children of illegal immigrant parents resided in the country in 2009. These infants are, according to the longstanding administrative interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, United States citizens from birth. Congress has never legislated, nor the Supreme Court specifically ruled on whether babies born to visiting foreign nationals are eligible for automatic US Citizenship. These children are sometimes referred to as anchor babies because of the belief that the mother gave birth in the United States as a way to anchor their family in the US. The provisions of the 1996 immigration law mean that an undocumented parent of a citizen child who entered the country without permission (" illegal entry ") would need to leave the United States and wait a number of years before they would be able to apply for a visa to return to the US or gain legal residency on the basis of family reunification, while undocumented parents who legally entered the United States (for example overstaying a visa) can in some cases be sponsored by their adult citizen child for legal residency without necessarily having to leave the country. Additionally, households headed by an undocumented parent are not eligible for many public assistance programs (ex. not eligible for TANF or temporary cash assistance to families with children in extreme poverty, " Obamacare " subsidies for health insurance or expanded Medicaid to working-age low-income adults, public housing, Section 8 housing voucher program) regardless of whether their child is a United States citizen or not, with some exceptions (Medicaid/SCHIP for the US citizen child, SNAP/"foodstamps" on behalf of a US citizen child, the temporarily expanded child-tax credit in 2021–2022, as well as some state and city programs specifically designed to include undocumented residents and their families)