Fight Brewing Over 'Anchor Baby' Citizenship

The biggest immigration battle of 2011 is likely to focus on how exactly an American is defined. A coalition of lawmakers from Arizona and about a dozen other states is fighting to deny citizenship to children born to illegal immigrants. They want to take the "anchor babies" issue all the way to the Supreme Court and plan to unveil their plan of action today, the New York Times reports.

Instead of attempting to amend the Constitution's 14th Amendment—which extends citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States"—the lawmakers plan to create two kinds of birth certificates in their states, one for children born to citizens and one for children born to illegal immigrants. "This is not a far-out, extremist position,” an Arizona legislator leading the effort says. "Only a handful of countries in the world grant citizenship based on the GPS location of the birth." (More US Supreme Court stories.)