by Amanda Baker19th, this story was originally published 19th
This is the story Originally reported by Amanda Baker 19th. Meet Amanda and read more of her reports on gender, politics and policy.
In view of a decision of the Supreme Court this week Upholding the constitutional right to birthright citizenshipThe Trump administration and fellow Republican immigration hardliners are looking for alternatives to limit the citizenship rights of children born within the United States to foreign tourists.
Mark Wayne Mullin, President Donald Trump’s director of homeland security, Featured on “Fox & Friends”.” As of Wednesday morning, the effort could include banning pregnant foreigners from traveling to the United States.
“There are tourist visas that they come to the U.S. or our territories just to give birth; they’ll come in the eighth month, maybe one, two, three weeks, to give birth here,” Mullin said. He offered no evidence that the practice was widespread.
They “have a child who can go back to China, raise a person under a communist regime — even though they’re a United States citizen — and they come back here, and in some cases, they go to university, steal intellectual property. It’s absolutely a national security issue,” Mullin continued.
Mullin added that there was a “long conversation in the White House” after the Supreme Court ruled on the birthright citizenship case on Tuesday. He met with Trump; Stephen Miller, a top adviser to the president and architect of many of his far-right immigration policies; and Tom Homan, the president’s “border czar.”
Miller, when asked by Fox News later that day On whether the administration should ban travel by pregnant foreigners, he said the country should think “very carefully” about whether childbirth is allowed here.
Here’s what to know about birth-related tourism in the U.S., how the Trump administration has moved to limit it, and what they’re talking about next.
This story will be updated.
The federal government does not keep an official count of how many foreign tourists traveled to the United States to give birth so their babies could become U.S. citizens. The Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates significantly reducing immigration, estimates that in 2020 there were Between 20,000 and 26,000 babies are likely to be born to foreign tourists in the United States. 3.6 million babies were born in the country that year; Conservative advocacy groups identified the potential cases as less than 1 percent of overall births. There is the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute Birth tourism described As a “rare practice”.
Has the Trump administration tried to stop what it calls “birth tourism” before?
State Department announcement Earlier this month the U.S. Embassy in West Africa uncovered “a sophisticated birth tourism network of more than 100 foreign nationals who use fraudulent documents and visa ‘fixers’ to get themselves visas for their children to obtain U.S. citizenship.”
“Under President Trump, the State Department is protecting the integrity of U.S. citizenship by ending illegal birth tourism schemes,” the agency said.
The State Department, early in Trump’s second term, Issued a travel notification US consular officers will refuse a tourist visa to any traveler who is coming to the US for the primary purpose of giving birth so that their child can acquire citizenship.
In April, shortly after the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the birthright citizenship case — and the justices seemed skeptical that Trump had the power to issue an executive order ending the practice — the news agency Reuters reported That Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has directed its investigators to focus on a new “birth tourism initiative.”
Travel to the United States on a temporary tourist visa for the primary purpose of giving birth is currently prohibited. While customs officers are limited in how they can question visa applicants about pregnancy, federal immigration enforcement agencies have wide latitude to determine how the policies are implemented.
In late 2014, for example, the United States and China entered into a decade-long reciprocal visa agreement. Based on this agreement, consular officers were instructed not to refuse visa applicants from China, even if their primary purpose for travel was to give birth to their children and obtain US citizenship — they would be treated like any other applicant for a medical visa.
In early 2020, the State Department revised its policies to make “travel to the United States with the primary purpose of acquiring U.S. citizenship for a child through birth in the United States an impermissible basis for the issuance of a B nonimmigrant visa.” It also raised the standards for qualifying for a medical visa, including showing means to pay for treatment
Limiting the ability of tourists and other immigrants to obtain U.S. citizenship for their children has been a longtime priority of the conservative flank of the Republican Party — and ties into the legal arguments made by the Trump administration in Trump v. Barbara, the birthright citizenship case.
Solicitor General d. John Sauer Told the judges That birthright citizenship “has spawned a sprawling industry of birth tourism” and that “tourists from hostile countries have flocked to the United States to give birth.” Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative who often casts swing votes on a divided court, asked Sauer for more information about the prevalence of birth-related tourism. Sauer’s answer: “Nobody knows for sure.”
Roberts wrote the opinion for the 6-3 majority that upheld the constitutional right to birthright citizenship. Fellow conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett joins him along with the court’s three liberal justices: Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch agreed with the outcome of the case, but on slightly different legal grounds.
Justice Samuel Alito Wrote about his dissenting opinion “Born Tourist”.describing them as “women who come here only to give birth to a child and then quickly return home.”
How could the Trump administration impose more travel restrictions on pregnant foreign tourists?
It remains unclear how the Trump administration may direct immigration enforcement agencies to crack down on pregnant foreign tourists entering the country.
So far, much of the public discussion from members of the administration has focused on limiting travel to pregnant foreign nationals who are apparently in the later stages of pregnancy. Mullin said on Fox & Friends that traveling late in pregnancy “may also cause health problems for the mother.” (It can also be dangerous in the early stages.) The administration’s immigration-related investigation found no evidence that birth-related tourism occurs in the final weeks of pregnancy.
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A Good Men ProjectWe are proud of Syndicate Reporting 19thAn independent nonprofit newsroom covering gender, politics, policy and power. We value their work because it helps make visible something that is often considered secondary or niche: you cannot fully understand public life without understanding how gender and race shape who is heard, who is protected, and who is called upon to bear the consequences when systems fail.
We believe these stories are the reason questions are here 19th Also raises human questions. They affect the everyday experience of living in families, schools, health care, faith communities, citizenship, security and democracy. They also intersect with the many discourses of masculinity, identity, care, justice, and social expectations that shape people’s lives long before they have language for them. If we want a more honest conversation about how to live well in a rapidly changing world, we need reporting that clearly focuses on power, rights and whose stories are central. This is one reason we are delighted to share their work.
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