This article is way too long to post (at least in MHO) so I'll just leave the link and you can all comment....here's a few highlights:

http://www.cis.org/birthright-citizenship

Among the findings:

* Only 30 of the world’s 194 countries grant automatic citizenship to children born to illegal aliens.

* Of advanced economies, Canada and the United States are the only countries that grant automatic citizenship to children born to illegal aliens.

* No European country grants automatic citizenship to children of illegal aliens.

* The global trend is moving away from automatic birthright citizenship as many countries that once had such policies have ended them in recent decades.

* 14th Amendment history seems to indicate that the Citizenship Clause was never intended to benefit illegal aliens nor legal foreign visitors temporarily present in the United States.

* The U.S. Supreme Court has held that the U.S.-born children of permanent resident aliens are covered by the Citizenship Clause, but the Court has never decided whether the same rule applies to the children of aliens whose presence in the United States is temporary or illegal.

* Some eminent scholars and jurists have concluded that it is within the power of Congress to define the scope of the Citizenship Clause through legislation and that birthright citizenship for the children of temporary visitors and illegal aliens could likely be abolished by statute without amending the Constitution.

The international findings in this report are the result of direct communication with foreign government officials and analysis of relevant foreign law. It is the most current research on global birthright citizenship data.

The Impact of Birthright Citizenship

Between 300,000 and 400,000 children are born to illegal immigrants in the United States every year. Put another way, as many as one out of 10 births in the United States is to an illegal immigrant mother.2 All of these children are considered by the executive branch of the U.S. government to be U.S. citizens who enjoy the same rights and are entitled to the same benefits as the children of U.S. citizens.

The population of U.S.-born children with illegal alien parents has expanded rapidly in recent years from 2.3 million in 2003 to 4 million in 2008; since these figures do not include children who are 18 years of age or older nor those who are married, the actual figure is somewhat larger.3

The two citizenship benefits that have drawn the most attention in the birthright citizenship debate are, first, food assistance and other welfare benefits to which a family of illegal aliens would not otherwise have access, and second, the ability of the child when he grows up to legalize his parents, and also to bring into the United States his foreign-born spouse and any foreign-born siblings. The sponsored spouse can, in turn, sponsor her own foreign-born parents and siblings, and the siblings can, in turn, sponsor their own foreign-born spouses, and so on, generating a virtually never-ending and always-expanding migration chain.

Because having a child on U.S. soil can cement an immigrant’s presence in the United States, provide access to welfare benefits, and ultimately initiate chain migration of the child’s extended family and in-laws, children born to illegal aliens and legal temporary visitors are sometimes referred to as “anchor babies.â€