Birth tourism is a significant problem for the U.S., which the U.S. Supreme Court effectively ignored in its woefully wrong ruling earlier this year against President Donald Trump’s executive order curtailing nearly unlimited birthright citizenship.
The problem stems from an overly broad reading of the 14th Amendment, fueling a growing industry of both nefarious individuals and nations that are exploiting America’s open-ended birthright citizenship standard. Freedom isn’t free, and neither is handing out citizenship to all comers.
Recently, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) estimated the annual cost of birthright citizenship to American taxpayers at $150.7 billion. Roughly half of this annual sum goes to educating foreign children born in the U.S., while the rest funds various healthcare and welfare programs, such as food assistance for these children.
Put bluntly, this is theft.
That’s how President Trump sees it as well, as he issued two executive orders following the Court’s ruling that are more targeted and aim to tackle specifically the problem of birth tourism and protect American citizenship.
As FAIR director of investigations Mateo Forero warns, “We have this opening for foreign nationals from places like China who are essentially farming U.S. citizenship. You have U.S.-born individuals who are then actually living their entire lives back in China under the Chinese Communist Party, which has clearly adversarial interests against the United States. So it’s a national security concern as well.”
Furthermore, Forero points out, “Wealthy foreign nationals increasingly hire American surrogates so their biological children are born on U.S. soil and acquire citizenship automatically — bypassing even the need for the mother to travel.”
Effectively, China is breeding an army, all of whom will technically hold U.S. citizenship.
As the official State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual currently reads, “Children born in the United States acquire U.S. citizenship at birth regardless of the use of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) and/or surrogacy.”
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, an estimated 20,000 to 26,000 annual births in the U.S. fall under this birth tourism category, with an additional 225,000 to 250,000 annual births to illegal aliens.
Numbers like these demonstrate that this is not a minor problem, and indeed, given the fact that the majority of birth tourism is tied to China, it is a serious national security issue.
Forero argues that Congress must act, especially since Trump’s options are limited and ultimately temporary, particularly if a Democrat follows him into office. “States and Congress need to take a long, hard look at what the rules around surrogacy and cross-border surrogacy specifically need to be and what reforms are necessary,” Forero states.
While the immediate high annual cost to American taxpayers is problematic enough, especially given our nation’s massive debt, the future problems are even more concerning, for this is creating a significant population of people who are legally American but hold no love for or commitment to this country and our Constitution.
Indeed, America is already suffering from a massive segment of the population who hold an anti-American bias, primarily from those on the Left who have effectively been raised to loathe America, her history, founding, liberty, and strength.
Allowing the continued exploitation of birthright citizenship only undermines our nation and our people’s interests.
