The State Department has released new draft guidance aimed at combating birth tourism. The proposed rule would require parents to provide proof of citizenship or legal immigration status when applying for a U.S. passport for their children.
The rule forms part of the Trump administration’s broader effort to curb birth tourism, undertaken in response to the Supreme Court’s catastrophic ruling in favor of birthright citizenship.
Once implemented, this policy would significantly reduce the financial incentive for birth tourism. In birth tourism schemes, pregnant foreign nationals travel to the United States right before they give birth. Then, once the children are born on American soil, they claim birthright citizenship for the anchor babies, and the parents immediately take them back to their home countries.
Foreign governments and families use these children’s American citizenship to extract extensive welfare benefits from the US government and taxpayers. The children involved in birth tourism are Americans in name only. They are raised as foreigners by their parents and live in their nation of origin.
Most importantly, all the monetary benefits they receive from citizenship are sent to the foreign nations and used to enrich their people. Birth tourism ultimately functions as a wealth transfer from US taxpayers to other nations. In fact, it has become so lucrative that entire companies exist just to facilitate the process.
The proposed rule, once implemented, would block the parents’ attempts to drain welfare money in their child’s name. They could still take the child back to their home country, but would have to do so with a foreign passport and could not then claim welfare money. The children legally would be US citizens, but they cannot prove it for the purpose of demanding funds.
Without access to welfare benefits, the birth tourism industry would collapse. The administration should make efforts to finalize and implement the rule promptly, because the left will almost certainly fight back with frivolous court challenges.
Texans for Strong Borders supports this potential policy change. The Supreme Court’s Birthright Citizenship decision severely weakened our country, and President Trump is right to pursue every potential avenue of damage control. While birthright citizenship and chain migration still plague the nation, stopping birth tourism would be a significant victory.
Birth tourism is an economic drain on the American people and an affront to our national dignity. Hardworking American taxpayers have subsidized this practice for too long. It is time to end it.