US Senate Probes China Birth Tourism, Warns of Million Citizen-Kids in China

The issue was raised during a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution examining whether children born in the United States to undocumented migrants or temporary visitors should automatically receive American citizenship.

Investigative journalist Peter Schweizer told lawmakers that organised companies arrange travel, medical care, and logistics for foreign nationals seeking to give birth in the United States so their children obtain American citizenship.

"What is birth tourism? Birth tourism is essentially an industry that provides concierge service at every step of the way for a foreign national... they will transport them to the United States, arrange medical care, arrange for citizenship for the child, and as soon as the child is old enough to travel, they will return back to China," Schweizer said in testimony.

Schweizer told the panel that the scale of the practice could be significant, citing estimates suggesting tens of thousands of Chinese nationals may give birth in the United States each year.

"The Chinese government gave an estimate a few years ago... on average 50,000 Chinese citizens a year were giving birth in the United States or at US territories like Saipan," he said.

He added that other estimates were higher.

"There was a research firm in China that estimated in 2018 alone, 180,000 managed to give birth in the United States," Schweizer said.

Based on those estimates, he said the number of American citizens raised in China through birth tourism could be substantial.

"If you do the math... you are looking at roughly 1 million US citizens who are being raised in the People's Republic of China today," he said.

Schweizer also raised concerns that some clients of birth tourism companies include members of China's political and military elite.

"These are not political dissidents. These are military officers, people from the Ministry of Propaganda people that are high ranking officials in the Chinese Communist Party," he said.

Schweizer said the practice raises long-term national security questions because children born in the United States automatically receive citizenship and could later exercise rights such as voting or applying for government jobs.

The claims drew scepticism from some lawmakers during the hearing.

Senator Richard Durbin questioned the evidence presented and pressed for concrete data about prosecutions related to birth tourism.

"You've got some big claims, but when it comes to numbers, you ought to be able to tell us how many have been prosecuted," Durbin said.

Legal experts also told the panel that birth tourism is already restricted under existing immigration regulations.

Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia, said US immigration rules already allow officials to deny entry to travellers seeking to enter the country on tourist visas solely to give birth.

"There's a regulation on the books... which makes it illegal to enter the United States on a tourist visa for the purpose of giving birth," Frost said.

She added that enforcing existing rules could address the issue without altering the constitutional principle of birthright citizenship.

The debate over birth tourism emerged as part of a broader political and legal fight over birthright citizenship in the United States.

President Donald Trump has issued an executive order seeking to end automatic citizenship for children born to undocumented migrants or temporary visitors, arguing that the Constitution does not require such a policy.

The issue is expected to reach the US Supreme Court soon, where justices will consider whether the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause guarantees citizenship to anyone born on American soil.

The 14th Amendment, adopted in 1868 after the Civil War, states that "all persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States." The provision was intended in part to overturn the Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott decision, which denied citizenship to African Americans.

In 1898, the Supreme Court's ruling in United States v. Wong Kim Ark affirmed that children born in the United States to foreign parents are citizens, a precedent that has shaped American citizenship law for more than a century.

- IANS