One of about every 12 babies born in the United States in 2008 was the offspring of illegal immigrants

An estimated 340,000 of the 4.3 million babies born in the United States that year had parents who were in the country illegally. More than three-fourths of all illegal immigrants in the United States in March 2009 were Latinos and nearly one out of every four children under the age of 18 in the nation is Hispanic. Overall, Latinos who live in the United States have higher rates of fertility than do whites, blacks or Asians and among Hispanics, the foreign born have higher rates of fertility than the native born. The government estimates that there are more than 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States.