"Birth tourism" is Trump's next immigration target
Stef W. Kight, Jonathan Swan 5 hours ago
The Trump administration has a new target on the immigration front — pregnant women visiting from other countries — with plans as early as this week to roll out a new rule cracking down on "birth tourism," three administration officials told Axios.
Why it matters: Trump has threatened to end birthright citizenship and railed against immigrant "anchor babies." The new rule would be one of the first tangible steps to test how much legal authority the administration has to prevent foreigners from taking advantage of the 14th Amendment's protection of citizenship for anyone born in the U.S.
*"This change is intended to address the national security and law enforcement risks associated with birth tourism, including criminal activity associated with the birth tourism industry," a State Department official told Axios.
*The regulation is also part of the administration's broader efforts to intensify the vetting process for visas, according to another senior administration official.
The big picture: "Birth tourists" often come to the U.S. from China, Russia and Nigeria, according to the AP.
*There's no official count of babies born to foreign visitors in the U.S., while the immigration restrictionist group Center for Immigration Studies — which has close ties to Trump administration immigration officials — puts estimates at around 33,000 every year.
How the new regulation would work: It would alter the requirements for B visas (or visitor visas), giving State Department officials the authority to deny foreigners the short-term business and tourism visas if they believe the process is being used to facilitate automatic citizenship.
*It's unclear yet how the rule would be enforced — whether officials would be directed to consider pregnancy or the country of the woman's citizenship in determining whether to grant a visa.
*Consular officers who issue passports and visas "are remarkably skilled at sussing out true versus false claims," the senior official said.
*"The underlying practical issue is that very few people who give birth in the U.S. got a visa for that specific purpose. Most people already have visas and come in later," according to Jeffrey Gorsky, former chief legal adviser in the State Department visa office.
This is but one step in the administration's plans to make it harder for people from other countries to benefit from birthright citizenship.
*"Rome wasn't built in a day," the senior official said. "Just the legal recognition that this is improper and wrong and not allowed is a significant step forward."
*The plans to address the use of B visas for birth tourism were included in the latest version of the Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions.
*Immigration experts expect there to be a similar rule for Customs and Border Protection to go along with the State Department's regulation.
What to watch: Most of Trump's major immigration moves have been met with lawsuits. If the regulation leaves it to officers' discretion to ensure that B visas aren't used for birth tourism, it would be difficult to challenge in court, according to Lynden Melmed, an attorney and former chief counsel at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
*"State Department officials have all the discretion in the world to deny people visas," said Sarah Pierce of the Migration Policy Institute. Foreign nationals who are outside the U.S. and have not yet received visas "don't have a lot of legal standing."
*But specific restrictions that could keep out non-birth tourism visitors — such as pregnant women coming to the U.S. for business, etc. — would be legally questionable, according to Melmed and Gorsky.
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Trump administration will move to block 'birth tourism'
by Anna Giaritelli
| January 20, 2020 06:10 PM
he Trump administration is days away from announcing a plan to limit the automatic provision of U.S. citizenship to people born in the United States whose parents are noncitizens visiting the country, a senior administration official told the Washington Examiner on Monday.
The move is meant to go after "birth tourism," which refers to an underground market in which pregnant women travel to the U.S. to have a baby that will immediately be a citizen. The 14th Amendment states any child born on U.S. soil is a citizen, no matter the status of the parents.
The State Department took the lead on the initiative, though visa protocols are administered by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services at the Department of Homeland Security, according to Axios, which reported the news on Sunday. The administration has not decided how to go about blocking citizenship to this class of newborns, but it has looked at giving the State Department the ability to deny visitor visas to people on short-term business, as well as tourism visas to women it believes may be trying to give birth in the U.S.
It's not clear if the State Department would attempt to determine if a woman was pregnant or not at the time of submitting a visa application or at the time of travel or how many people would be affected.
The move comes after President Trump divulged in August and again in October that he wanted to issue an executive order to strip the right of any child born in the U.S. from becoming a citizen if the child's mother was in the country illegally or not a citizen. He also talked about doing it back in September 2018.
Birth tourism has been a leading issue in the Trump administration's immigration agenda. Trump has called U.S. children born to noncitizens "anchor babies," a derogatory term. During the 2016 campaign, he referred to Republican presidential contender Ted Cruz as a Canadian anchor baby.
Ken Cuccinelli, the former acting head of USCIS who is now acting deputy secretary at the DHS, said in the fall that changing the law would not require amending the Constitution, which provides that people born in the U.S. are automatically citizens.
Last February, the Justice Department announced the indictment of 19 people for their roles in an international "birth tourism" ring that brought "thousands" of pregnant women, mainly from China, to California so they could give birth and have a U.S. child. The case marked the first time criminal charges have been filed in federal court in a "birth tourism" case.
The indictments revealed that those involved had promised pregnant women access to the "most attractive nationality," "better air," "priority for jobs in U.S. government," "free education from junior high school to public high school," and the chance to "receive your senior supplement benefits when you are living overseas." For $15,000 to $50,000 per person, the women would be coached on how to pass visa interviews, told how to overstay visas once in the U.S., and taught how to apply for federal benefits.
The women were also told to wear loose-fitting clothing when they traveled to the U.S. so their pregnancy would not be obvious to Customs and Border Protection officers at the airport. The indictments also state women were told to fly first to Hawaii and then to Los Angeles because the customs officers in Hawaii were easier to get by. Those arranging the trips made millions of dollars.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/n...-birth-tourism
