Senator Lindsay Graham: "People come here to have babies. They come here to drop a child. It's called 'drop and leave."

With his call for a possible amendment to the citizenship provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment, Senator Lindsey Graham has put birthright citizenship into the news.  PolitiFact.Com carefully evaluates Senator Graham's statement above bout "drop and leave" migration and concludes that

"It's true that many illegal immigrants are having children in the U.S. However, we are not convinced that `drop and leave' is a phenomenon. The data suggests that the motivator for illegal immigrants is the search for work and a better economic standing over the long term, not quickie citizenship for U.S.-born babies. Graham appears to be conflating two things -- a pattern of wealthy foreigners engaging in "birth tourism" using legal visas, and illegal immigration of poorer people from Mexico. In our view, failing to make the distinction exaggerates the alleged problem and uses inflammatory rhetoric to obscure legitimate policy questions. On balance, we rate his comment Half True."

KJ