Birthright Citizenship: an Expensive Beneficence

National Review reports on the costs to the American taxpayer associated with birthright citizenship and birth tourism. The article notes that roughly one baby in ten born in the U.S. is born to illegal immigrant parents.

Inflation-adjusted figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture projected that a child born in 2013 would cost his parents $304,480 from birth to his eighteenth birthday. Given that illegal-alien households are normally low-income households (three out of five illegal aliens and their U.S.-born children live at or near the poverty line), one would expect that a significant portion of that cost will fall on the government.

According to CIS, 71 percent of illegal-alien headed households with children received some sort of welfare in 2009, compared with 39 percent of native-headed houses with children.

U.S.-born children of illegal aliens are entitled to American public schools, health care, and more, even though illegal-alien households rarely pay taxes.

Notes:
"CIS" referred to above is the Center for Immigration Studies.
Illegal aliens rarely pay income and property taxes, true of all low-income people. They do pay sales and motor vehicle taxes, which are not means-tested.