Sen. Marsha Blackburn is looking to crack down on birth tourism.
The Tennessee Republican rolled out legislation Tuesday to stop foreign nationals from traveling to the U.S. to give birth so the child gets U.S. citizenship and all the lifetime perks that go with it.
“Foreign nationals have been exploiting our nation’s immigration laws for far too long, taking advantage of the system to come to the United States for the sole purpose of giving birth to obtain U.S. citizenship for their children,” Ms. Blackburn said in a statement. “The Ban Birth Tourism Act would prevent foreign nationals, including those from adversaries like Communist China and Russia, from buying American citizenship for their children.”
President Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office that would deny citizenship to children who are born to parents living in the U.S. illegally or temporarily.
However, that push is tied up in the courts thanks to legal challenges from states and individuals who say the effort violates the 14th Amendment.
The Supreme Court last week heard arguments in appeals of the orders blocking the Trump administration’s citizenship restrictions from taking effect.
Ms. Blackburn said her proposal would fill some of the gaps in the law while Mr. Trump fights to crack down on birthright citizenship.
She highlighted a 2020 study from the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for stricter immigration limits, that estimated birth tourism yields 33,000 births to women on tourist visas each year, and “hundreds of thousands more are born to mothers who are illegal aliens or present on temporary visas.”
The Department of Justice has charged people in birth tourism rings in which women who paid tens of thousands of dollars received transportation and medical care and were kept in apartments until they gave birth.
This allowed expecting women to come into the country on a tourist visa and return home with a baby who was a U.S. citizen.
In one instance in 2020, those operating a ring advertised their businesses in China, saying the U.S. had better air, better jobs, better schools and “the most attractive nationality,” prosecutors said.
Ms. Blackburn said “birth tourism” has become a multimillion-dollar industry that often caters to wealthy Russian and Chinese customers, and that when those infants turn 21 years old, they can then sponsor the migration of their parents into the country.
