Should America ban birth tourism?
More worrisome still is the concern that birth tourism may be used as a platform for inserting future sleeper agents into the US.
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More worrisome still is the concern that birth tourism may be used as a platform for inserting future sleeper agents into the US.
In the wake of last month’s US Supreme Court decision striking down the Trump administration’s executive order denying birthright citizenship to children of non-immigrants, many conservative lawmakers are clamoring for an outright ban on birth tourism, a kind of visa loophole through which enterprising travel companies entice gravid foreigners to travel to America for the sole purpose of giving birth to obtain automatic US citizenship for their newborns.
Offering a variety of packaged services that include not only booking and accommodation assistance but birthing and post-pregnancy care as well, these travel companies charge humongous fees ranging from a low of $25,000 to a high of $80,000 for premium packages.
Based on the results of a congressional investigation a few years ago, two birth tourism companies emerged as major players. One, based in California, catered mostly to Chinese clients. The other, a Florida-based agency, worked mostly with Russian tourists.
By 2015, birth tourism was enjoying an unbridled resurgence thanks in large part to a State Department cable instructing consular officers not to deny visitor’s visas to female applicants based on their intent to give birth in the US. Under the directive, birth tourists were to be treated as visitors traveling for medical reasons. Thus, birth tourism was officially classified as falling under the regular visitor’s visa category for business or pleasure, with no visa violation attached to anyone traveling under such a scenario.
In 2020, however, and presumably spooked by a congressional probe into the program’s abuse, the State Department suddenly shifted gears and declared that traveling to America with the intent of giving birth for automatic citizenship purposes was an impermissible activity under a visitor’s visa. Thus, traveling for birthing-related reasons was no longer considered valid travel for business or pleasure. Consequently, anyone misrepresenting or concealing the true purpose of travel could be held liable for visa fraud.
On the heels of this consular paradigm shift, so to speak, the two dominant travel companies were forced to shut down their immensely profitable operations, but not before assisting thousands of mostly Chinese and Russian clients to obtain American citizenship for their offspring.
Per congressional studies, among the major negatives of birth tourism is the unfair advantage accorded to people with no strong personal and societal ties to the US. Indeed, while naturalized Americans must hurdle years, even decades, of stringent residency and character vetting requirements, most children of birth tourists — by-products of a “short-circuit” process — end up permanently residing in their parents’ homeland after birth, often without retaining any sense of personal loyalty or allegiance to the country where they were born.
More worrisome still is the concern that birth tourism may be used as a platform for inserting future sleeper agents into the US, considering that the vast majority of birth tourists originate from countries whose geopolitical objectives are antithetical to America’s national security interests.
Unfortunately, while the State Department can modulate the impact of birth tourism via policy-making directives, however, unless and until there is an express statutory prohibition against the use of visitor’s visa for such a purpose, the prevalence of its occurrence will always be dependent on the rollercoaster of executive discretion.
Is it good enough for America’s long-term national security health? Probably not, under the present circumstances.
