The Supreme Court’s recent interpretation of America’s “birthright citizenship” laws would actually give the privileges of U.S. citizenship to the children of Hamas terrorists.
All a mother has to do to claim such rights and benefits is find her way to American shores and have the baby on U.S. soil.
That was the admission last week from a Democrat witness in the House Judiciary Committee’s hearing on a booming birth tourism industry that is diluting U.S. citizenship, undermining the rule of law, and granting the benefits of being an American to individuals who may wish to do us harm.
For decades, America has been treated as a charity nation for millions of parents to come and deliver their children with no connection to our culture, language, or shared heritage.
No developed nation in the world beyond Canada follows a comparable approach to automatic birthright citizenship.
President Donald Trump has rightfully launched an overdue crusade against the abuses of birthright citizenship.
The Supreme Court has now substantially undermined the President’s agenda to curb this giveaway of lifelong privileges by recently ruling to guarantee newborn children of new or even visiting arrivals the valuable benefits of permanent citizenship.
The natural result of this wrong-headed decision will ultimately be the explosion of industries dedicated to selling U.S. citizenship to children being raised by foreign adversaries.
One aspect of a foreigner’s quest for obtaining American citizenship deserves particular attention: international surrogacy.
The global surrogate industry, combined with America's extraordinarily permissive surrogacy laws, allows foreign nationals to essentially rent the wombs of American women to obtain U.S. citizenship for their children—and perhaps eventually for themselves.
In some cases, these arrangements are orchestrated before the intended parents ever set foot in the United States.
Last year, a Wall Street Journal investigation revealed that one wealthy Chinese man fathered more than 100 American-born children through this exploitive system.
Another Chinese man reportedly used American models as egg donors to have 10 daughters, with the intention of one day marrying them off to powerful men.
In one particularly troubling case, an American surrogate was reportedly left caring for triplets for months after their intended Chinese father was unable to obtain a U.S. visa.
The man eventually sent agents to the surrogate's home to collect the children, as if they were commodities. Circumstances like this (with the visa being denied) also raise serious questions about whether the man may have had ties to a human trafficking network or been involved in other illegal activity.
Surrogacy agencies, particularly in California, actively market their services to Asian clients, including through Mandarin-language websites with content distinct from their English-language pages. Some agencies have listed offices in China, where commercial surrogacy is illegal.
There are reports of more than 107 Chinese-owned surrogacy agencies operating in Southern California alone, catering almost exclusively to wealthy Chinese clients, with some allegedly linked to Chinese state-owned entities.
This issue has been occurring across the U.S. for years, with studies showing that the practice has increased each year since 2014.
While it has been concentrated primarily in blue states such as California, Illinois, and New York, I have even heard reports of it happening right in Wyoming, far from a left-wing sanctuary haven for illegal immigration. That should concern every American.
President Trump has responded with a crackdown on these services exploiting the Supreme Court’s misinterpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The President signed a new executive order in August designed to deny automatic citizenship to children born by commercial surrogacy paid for by foreign parents.
More can and should be done to protect the classification of being a U.S. citizen from the “alien enemy” identified in the executive order from abusing international surrogacy to secure the rights, protections, and entitlements reserved for American children.
I outlined the steps President Trump should take in an August letter requesting the administration to investigate and hold accountable U.S. agencies facilitating international surrogacy.
The President should use every lawful authority available to deny visas to foreign nationals who intend to come to the U.S. solely to collect a child born through a surrogacy arrangement.
I also encouraged President Trump to consider whether individuals who abuse our immigration system in this manner should be permanently ineligible for entry under any visa category or for other immigration benefits — including asylum, refugee status, temporary protected status, lottery- or family-based immigration, lawful permanent residency, or U.S. citizenship (including through a future marriage to an American citizen).
Congress cannot afford to ignore these loopholes either.
I am working with the House Judiciary Committee to explore legislative options addressing international surrogacy to ensure American citizenship is not treated as a commodity that can be purchased by the existence of a loophole.
We must restore common sense to our birthright citizenship laws, close industries that invite abuse, and stop international surrogacy from being exploited as a back-door way of obtaining American citizenship.
