Anchor Baby - History and Usage

History and Usage

A related term, "anchor child", referring in this case to "very young immigrants who will later sponsor immigration for family members who are still abroad", was used in reference to Vietnamese boat people from about 1987. "Anchor baby" appeared in print in 1996, but remained relatively obscure until 2006, when it found new prominence amid the increased focus on the immigration debate in the United States. Lexicographer Grant Barrett nominated the term for the American Dialect Society's 2006 Word of the Year.

It is generally considered pejorative. In 2011 the American Heritage Dictionary added an entry for the term in the dictionary's new edition, which did not indicate that the term was disparaging. After eighty signers of an online petition by Jennifer Chenoweth-Ruiz and a critical blog piece by Mary Giovagnoli, the director of the Immigration Policy Center, a pro-immigration research group in Washington, the dictionary updated its online definition to indicate that the term is "offensive", similar to its entries on ethnic slurs. As of 2012, the definition reads:

n. Offensive Used as a disparaging term for a child born to a noncitizen mother in a country that grants automatic citizenship to children born on its soil, especially when the child's birthplace is thought to have been chosen in order to improve the mother's or other relatives' chances of securing eventual citizenship.

The decision to revise the definition led to some criticism from illegal immigration opponents. Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, an organization that advocates tighter restrictions on immigration, argues that defining the term as offensive is inaccurate and is done for purposes of political rhetoric; according to Krikorian, "' is a child born to an illegal immigrant,'" and the revision of the definition to state that the term is offensive was done to make a political statement. According to Fox News:

Bob Dane, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a Washington-based organization that seeks to end illegal immigration, said the revised definition panders to a small but vocal group of critics who are "manipulating the political, cultural and now linguistic landscape" of the United States. "Publishing word definitions to fit politically correct molds surrenders the language to drive an agenda," Dane told FoxNews.com. "This dictionary becomes a textbook for the open borders lobby."

Professor of Law at the University of Florida, Pedro A. Malavet, said that the dictionary's reclassification of the term "anchor baby" to a term that is considered offensive was "right".

According to the Double-Tongued Dictionary, written by American lexicographer Grant Barrett, the term "anchor baby" means "a child born of an immigrant in the United States, said to be a device by which a family can find legal foothold in the US, since those children are automatically allowed to choose United States citizenship." In response to a reader comment, Barrett claimed that the term is used to refer to a child of any immigrant, not just children of illegal immigrants.