A leading immigration researcher told lawmakers that an estimated 20,000 to 26,000 children may be born annually to foreign tourists in the United States, potentially bringing the decade-long total to between 200,000 and 300,000 as the Trump administration intensifies efforts to restrict birth tourism.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
An estimated 200,000 to 300,000 children may have been born in the United States to foreign visitors over the past decade through the practice commonly known as birth tourism, according to testimony delivered before Congress on Tuesday.
Steven Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, presented the estimate during a House Oversight Committee task force hearing led by Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, as lawmakers examined the scale and consequences of foreign nationals traveling to the United States to give birth.
“The best estimate we have made at the Center for Immigration Studies of the possible number of births to tourists is 20,000 to 26,000 a year, though that estimate is based on data from 2016 and 2017,” Camarota told lawmakers.
He said the annual estimate may appear modest when compared with the total number of births in the United States, but argued that the cumulative impact is substantial.
“Some might think the number is small relative to the overall number of births in the U.S. annually; however, the effect is cumulative. Assuming the numbers we estimated in the past continued, some 200,000 to 300,000 children were born to birth tourists over the last decade — hardly a trivial number.”
Camarota’s testimony came weeks after President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the State Department and Department of Homeland Security to pursue additional measures against birth tourism.
The administration defines the practice as foreign nationals entering the United States on nonimmigrant visas for the purpose of giving birth on American soil.
Under Trump’s order, federal authorities could take measures including refusing or revoking visas, denying entry into the United States and pursuing businesses or individuals that help facilitate birth-tourism arrangements.
The administration’s renewed focus on the issue followed a June Supreme Court ruling that struck down Trump’s attempt to limit birthright citizenship for children born to parents who are either in the United States illegally or present temporarily.
The court held that such children are U.S. citizens at birth under the 14th Amendment.
That ruling leaves the administration confronting birth tourism primarily through immigration enforcement, visa policy and restrictions on those who facilitate the practice rather than by denying citizenship after a child is born.
Federal rules already prohibit issuance of a visitor visa when officials determine that an applicant’s primary purpose for traveling to the United States is to give birth in order to secure U.S. citizenship for the child.
That restriction was initially adopted during Trump’s first administration.
Camarota argued that public concern over birth tourism extends beyond the raw number of births and reflects broader questions about how U.S. citizenship is obtained.
He cited polling showing that only 25% of Americans support automatically granting U.S. citizenship to children born in the country to foreign tourists.
“The sense among most Americans that birth tourism is a problem stems, I believe, directly from the idea that it turns American citizenship — one of the most valuable things in the world — into something that can be obtained under false pretenses,” Camarota said.
The distinction between children born to tourists and those born to illegal immigrants was also central to his testimony.
“There are many problems with granting automatic citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants. However, at least the children of illegal immigrants typically grow up in the United States,” Camarota said.
“This is generally not so for children born to birth tourists. And yet, as American citizens, they are able to enter the U.S. with no prior screening, attend college and receive financial aid, work at almost any job they choose — even with the federal government — and access all public benefits immediately upon arrival.”
Children born in the United States to tourists can leave the country shortly after birth and grow up abroad while retaining American citizenship, Camarota’s testimony noted.
That citizenship later gives them the ability to enter and reside in the United States without going through the immigration screening ordinarily required of foreign nationals.
It can also provide access to employment opportunities, higher education and government programs available to U.S. citizens.
Those consequences have made birth tourism a recurring target of immigration enforcement efforts.
The Trump administration’s latest action seeks to address the practice at the point of entry by strengthening the government’s ability to identify people whose intended purpose for visiting the United States is to give birth and by targeting businesses or intermediaries that organize such travel.
Camarota’s estimate remains based on data from 2016 and 2017, meaning the precise current number of annual births to foreign tourists has not been established by his testimony.
His projection assumes that the earlier estimated rate of 20,000 to 26,000 births per year continued over the intervening years.
On that basis, the cumulative number over a decade could reach between 200,000 and 300,000 children.
The congressional hearing places those estimates at the center of a renewed policy debate over whether existing visa enforcement is sufficient to deter birth tourism and what additional steps federal authorities can legally take following the Supreme Court’s ruling on birthright citizenship.
For the administration, the issue now turns increasingly on preventing travel undertaken for the purpose of obtaining citizenship through childbirth rather than attempting to alter the citizenship status of children after they are born.
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