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Citizen is born and becomes an anchor baby. look, i'm a grandmother of ten. i love children. but the fact is, this is breaking the back of the taxpayers of texas and the united states. >> okay. >> it's taking down our health care, our education, and it is a huge, huge burden. >> representative -- >> that are coming across to have the children for the entitlement programs, for the health and the education and everything else that goes with it. >> representative riddle -- >> anybody that denies that isn't telling the truth. >> out of the 60,000 estimated children born every year in texas, in you...

Legally. if they are over here illegally, working or not, and they have a baby, then that would come under the term anchor baby. that he is what we're taking about. that is breaking the back of the taxpayers. >> representative? >> yeah. thank you, anderson. the reality is that an anchor baby, according to the terms that the representative riddle would use is a baby that a mother has here in the united states, if they are undocumented, in order to somehow anchor that undocumented family in the state. and current federal law does not permit that. it just does not happen under u.s. law. >> you're...

To your immigration status. the fact is that a child, who is born here, cannot petition on behalf of their parents unless they've left the country for ten years. >> representative riddle -- >> in that case -- >> what about that? in texas, about 60,000 babies are born every year to illegal immigrants, according to some research. seems like studies that i've seen, the majority are just people working and having babies. do you have a number of how many actually you think are coming here in texas specifically to have babies? >> i'm going to have to take an exception to what my colleague representa...

>> undoubtedly that happens. but i do not think it happens in broad enough numbers and big enough numbers to change the constitution of the united states of america. >> representative riddle, let me ask you about that. how much of this is just about politics, about wanting to be seen to be doing something? the attorney general of texas, a republican, advised the legislature back in 2007 that immigration is largely the per vie of the federal government and that basically as a result, immigration bills in texas were left a dying committee, the chairman also said that the state would be tied up d...

>> he didn't interrupt you. let him finish and then i'll let you respond. >> thank you, anderson. the broader issue is, you know, why are we having a discussion about anchor babies. if a person has a child here, that child cannot petition for their parents or a sibling to be here in the united states for a period of ten years and that petition can only begin after they are 21 years old. so the -- for people to suggest that people are coming here and having babies as a way to anchor themselves on an undocumented basis in this country is just not correct. the law doesn't bear that out. just beca...