In their coverage of immigration, CBS news tonight seemed to say that children of undocumented aliens who were born in the USA were US citizens by virtue of being born in the States. They reckoned on some 3 million such young citizens.

Does this mean that any couple not in the US legally, or not US citizens for any reason, who have a child there automatically create a US citizen? Does this mean that a British couple who overstayed and had a child there could claim American citizenship for it? The child could, prima facie, claim dual nationality ! And the same would apply to the child of a couple who had themselves been smuggled in from Mexico or Venezuela or Cuba would it?

How and by what law does this arise?

To the best of my knowledge, any child born in the United States is by virtue of its birth, automatically a citizen. However, that does not change the citizenship of the child's parents, and parents have been returned to their country of citizenship with and without their citizen child. Puerto Ricans are US citizens (but cannot vote in presidential elections), but I am not sure about a foreign national giving birth in Puerto Rice. I don't know about the citizenship of the other posessions of the US.

Guamanian are US citizens, according to the CIA(who may or may not know about things), but ccannot vote in presidential elections.*

Other possessions and/or territories of the US are:

American Samoa, Baker Island, Guam, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway Islands, Navassa Island, Northern Mariana Islands, Palmyra Atoll, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Wake Island



*Puerto Ricans who live in in one of the states can vote for all applicable offices as a resident of that state.

This site may or may not answer your questions.

A citizen of the United States is a native-born, foreign-born, or naturalized person who owes allegiance to the United States and who is entitled to its protection. In addition to the naturalization process, the United States recognizes the U.S. citizenship of individuals according to two fundamental principles: jus soli, or right of birthplace, and jus sanguinis, or right of blood.

The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees citizenship at birth to almost all individuals born in the United States or in U.S. jurisdictions, according to the principle of jus soli. Certain individuals born in the United States, such as children of foreign heads of state or children of foreign diplomats, do not obtain U.S. citizenship under jus soli.

Certain individuals born outside of the United States are born citizens because of their parents, according to the principle of jus sanguinis (which holds that the country of citizenship of a child is the same as that of his / her parents). The U.S. Congress is responsible for enacting laws that determine how citizenship is conveyed by a U.S. citizen parent or parents according to the principle of jus sanguinis. These laws are contained in the Immigration and Nationality Act. - U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

This site also has links which may answer more clearly.
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Now there's another incentive to immigrate by whatever means . As a matter of fact such a rule used to apply in Britain but it was abolished altogether in 1983 because here it made no sense in the modern world to have people claiming all the rights of a British citizen, including the right of abode, simply because their parents had stopped by for a week in a maternity hospital many years before or one of them happened to be working in Britain at the time

The only concession along the lines of the US 'jus soli' is that a child born in Britain and who lives in Britain until ten years old has entitlement regardless of the parents' immigration status. Otherwise there's no right unless one parent is a British citizen. If only the father is British then the child only qualifies if the father was married to the mother whether at the birth or subsequently .

Why does the US not start by declaring that no child has an automatic right to citizenship unless one of its parents is a US citizen? Does that run counter to the tradition and culture of a country with a respected history of immigration ? Would not such a measure go some way towards removing an incentive to immigrate? As it stands it seems that once the child is born it has the right and that right is never lost whatever happens in its or its parents' later life. Somehow the image of a mother cuckoo comes to mind ( the European one, not the roadrunner ! )