‘Birth tourism,’ through rare, prompts talk of barring pregnant women from entering US |
‘Birth tourism,’ though rare, prompts talk of barring pregnant women from entering US
The Supreme Court’s ruling upholding birthright citizenship has prompted an outcry from the far right, including members of President Trump’s own administration, who have suggested the U.S. limit the entry of pregnant women into the country.
The high court in a 6-3 decision on Tuesday killed a Day 1 executive order from President Trump seeking to limit birthright citizenship only to those born to U.S. citizen parents, a loss that has left some corners of the GOP strategizing for ways to head off births to foreign parents.
White House aide Stephen Miller was initially laughing with Fox News host Jesse Watters, who asked with a chuckle whether the U.S. should be “banning foreign pregnant women.”
But Miller quickly struck a serious tone.
“You have to now think very carefully about who you let into your country, even on a temporary basis, because [of] the possibility, as you said, for birth tourism,” Miller said Tuesday.
Of course, a number of immigrants in the U.S. do give birth every year, a group that includes those lawfully present on worker or student visas, those seeking asylum, as well as those with no lawful status.
There are also births from people who are in the U.S. on tourist visas, which typically let a holder enter the country for up to six months, though such cases are rare.
So-called birth tourism, a form of obtaining a visa on fraudulent grounds, is already illegal. Nonetheless, that was the topic of a memo from the head of DOJ’s fraud division, who late Tuesday encouraged prosecutors to pursue such claims and consider additional charges.
“Though hard to know for certain, the most expansive albeit contested estimate based on review of U.S. Census Bureau data is that up to 26,000 babies born in the United States annually could be attributed to birth tourism—a tiny fraction of the more than 3.5 million U.S. births yearly,” the Migration Policy Institute wrote in a review earlier this year.
In the scenario described by Miller, the globe’s poor are strategically securing tourism visas, which are not easy to get, in order to give birth in the U.S. and bestow citizenship to children.
“People come here just to have babies on American soil, and that baby gets to be a citizen for life. So, you........