Source:
The New York TimesEven though the children have citizenship and live in an immigrant-friendly city that offers them a wide array of services, many are still hobbled by serious developmental and educational deficits resulting from their parents’ lives in the shadows, according to the study, whose author says it is the most comprehensive look to date at the effects of parents’ immigration status on young children.
“The undocumented are viewed in current policy debates as lawbreakers, laborers or victims — seldom as parents raising citizen children,” wrote the author, Hirokazu Yoshikawa, a Harvard education professor who has published the study as a book, “Immigrants Raising Citizens” (Russell Sage Foundation, 2011).
Professor Yoshikawa found that by the time the children of illegal immigrants reached age 2, they showed significantly lower levels of language and cognitive development than the children of legal immigrants and native-born parents.
“Millions of the youngest citizens in the United States, simply by virtue of being born to a parent with a particular legal status, have less access to the learning opportunities that are the building blocks of adult productivity,” he wrote.
Read more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/21/nyregion/illegal-immigrants-children-suffer-study-finds.html
So maybe the people who want to end birthright citizenship/reform the 14th Amendment have a point?
And that talking point on the right "illegal aliens on welfare" is shot down by this finding: "Fear of deportation or ignorance about how the city works often prevents those parents from seeking help from government agencies that provide child care subsidies or food stamps." (that's just in New York City but overall the right wing scare tactics like the one i just mentioned are usually overhyped BS)