Birthright Citizenship Costs Taxpayers $150.7 Billion Annually, According to Immigration Group

An immigration advocacy organization estimates that children born in the United States to immigrant parents generate more than $150 billion in annual public spending, renewing debate over birthright citizenship, birth tourism and international surrogacy arrangements.

By yourNEWS Media Newsroom

Birthright citizenship involving children of immigrants costs American taxpayers an estimated $150.7 billion annually, according to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), as the Trump administration pursues new restrictions on birth tourism following a Supreme Court ruling protecting constitutional citizenship rights.

FAIR estimates that approximately half the spending involves public education, with the remaining expenses attributed to healthcare, nutritional assistance and other government services.

The $150.7 billion figure is an advocacy group’s estimate, not an independently verified federal expenditure total. It also should not be interpreted as the cost of citizenship itself, since public services are provided to eligible residents under numerous federal and state laws regardless of how citizenship is acquired.

Mateo Forero, FAIR’s director of investigations, argued that the current interpretation of the 14th Amendment has encouraged foreign nationals to pursue American citizenship for their children through birth tourism and commercial surrogacy.

“Misinterpretation has led to a number of unfortunate and really harmful unintended consequences, with birth tourism being sort of one of those unintended consequences of a misreading of the Constitution,” Forero told The Center Square.

The debate intensified after the Supreme Court rejected President Donald Trump’s original executive order restricting birthright citizenship.

In its June 30 ruling in Trump v. Barbara, the court held that children born in the United States to parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present generally qualify for citizenship under the 14th Amendment.

The administration responded on August 6 with two executive orders addressing immigration-related citizenship concerns.

The first, Ending Birth Tourism, directs federal officials to strengthen enforcement against foreign nationals who use temporary visas primarily to give birth in the United States.

The second, Continuing to Protect the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship, addresses categories of births that the administration argues fall outside constitutional citizenship protections.

Forero said the revised policies are designed around exceptions left open by the court.

“They are keyed to kind of the doors that the Supreme Court left open in the Trump v. Barbara decision,” he said.

However, the ruling sharply limits efforts to deny citizenship based solely on a parent’s immigration status. The administration’s newer policies do not overturn that constitutional protection.

The controversy has also renewed scrutiny of commercial surrogacy arrangements involving foreign nationals.

A prominent case in Arcadia, California, involves Guojun Xuan, 66, and Silvia Zhang, 39, who were charged by Los Angeles County prosecutors in October with conspiracy to commit child abuse and additional offenses.

Authorities allege that the couple arranged for 21 children to be born, many through surrogacy, and that children living in their mansion were subjected to repeated abuse.

Both defendants have pleaded not guilty. Their attorneys have denied the allegations, and the criminal case remains pending.

The case has raised questions about oversight of surrogacy agencies and protections for children, although the alleged abuse does not itself establish that the arrangement violated citizenship laws.

Under the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual, children born in the United States generally acquire citizenship at birth regardless of whether assisted reproductive technology or gestational surrogacy was involved.

Forero argued that this allows wealthy foreign nationals to arrange for children to be born through American surrogates without traveling to the United States themselves.

“Wealthy foreign nationals increasingly hire American surrogates so their biological children are born on U.S. soil and acquire citizenship automatically — bypassing even the need for the mother to travel,” he said.

FAIR has identified California, New York, Florida and the Northern Mariana Islands as locations associated with organized birth-tourism operations.

Federal prosecutors previously pursued California businesses accused of helping foreign clients misrepresent their travel intentions to immigration officials.

A separate New York operation involving Turkish nationals resulted in convictions related to Medicaid fraud, while the Northern Mariana Islands experienced a substantial increase in births to foreign visitors before visa-waiver restrictions were tightened.

However, the overall scale of birth tourism remains difficult to determine because federal agencies do not systematically track births according to whether a parent entered the country specifically to obtain citizenship for a child.

The Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates stricter immigration policies, estimates that approximately 20,000 to 26,000 births annually involve foreign visitors traveling to the United States for that purpose.

Those estimates are not official government counts.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has opposed Trump’s attempts to restrict birthright citizenship, describing the administration’s policies as “unconscionable” and emphasizing the constitutional protections reaffirmed by the Supreme Court.

Forero, meanwhile, maintains that preventing organized birth tourism will ultimately require congressional legislation or a constitutional amendment.

“Really, at the end of the day, what we think here at FAIR is that this fix requires more than just executive action,” he said.

“It requires potential legislation, and obviously, the ultimate solution would be to pass a constitutional amendment to fix the misreading of the 14th Amendment.”

The dispute now centers on how far federal officials can restrict immigration practices associated with childbirth without violating constitutional citizenship protections.

While FAIR’s $150.7 billion estimate has renewed discussion about public spending, its methodology and assumptions are important to evaluating the claim. The legal questions surrounding birth tourism and cross-border surrogacy remain distinct from the constitutional citizenship rights already affirmed by the Supreme Court.