President Trump issued an order Thursday to crack down on “birth tourism” after he was defeated at the Supreme Court earlier this summer on the birthright citizenship issue.
Trump said the executive order would stop wealthy people from “buying their way” into citizenship with pregnant women traveling to the US birth an American baby.
“They’ve taken birthright citizenship and they’ve made a joke out of it,” he said during a signing ceremony in the Oval Office.
The order bars citizenship for children born to mothers who enter the United States for the sole purpose of having a child on American soil.
“Birth tourism is by definition a fraud on the American system, on the American taxpayer,” Stephen Miller, who is Trump’s top immigration adviser, said at the ceremony.
Miller has been the point person on this order, which also outlaws citizenship for children born to foreign diplomatic staff working in the US on behalf of another country and to children born to parents who are classified as alien enemies.
It will also bar citizenship for those born in US territories – such as Puerto Rico – but only if Congress passes a law to make that so. Legislation has been introduced but is not expected to pass.
It’s unclear how the order will be enforced on pregnant women and how the government will determine which pregnant women are coming just as tourists and those coming with the intention of giving birth on American soil.
Staff secretary Will Scharf charged that “criminal rings are setting up a system whereby tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of people can come to this country in an organized fashion and give birth here purely for the sake of obtaining birthright citizenship.”
He added that the order will contain a number of “different actions intended to combat those sorts of organized practices. We look very heavily at denying visas to people that we have reason to believe are coming here for that purpose, visas both for punitive parents but also for the people organizing these rings.”
In June, the Supreme Court rejected a push by the Trump administration to restrict constitutional birthright citizenship, leaving the practice protected under the 14th Amendment.
