Trump Can Still Fight Birthplace Citizenship Abuse After SCOTUS Refused To
The Trump administration is doing its best to creatively prevent birthplace citizenship for foreign nationals despite the recent SCOTUS ruling.The Trump administration is doing its best to creatively prevent birthplace citizenship for foreign nationals despite the recent SCOTUS ruling.Birth tourism is only the beginning
When the Supreme Court struck down President Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order in Trump v. Barbara, it settled for now in the courts who becomes a citizen at birth. It did not settle — and could not settle — whether American citizenship may be bought and sold.
It remains well within the power of Congress and the president to shut down the contracts, clinics, agencies, and visas that convert foreign money into American citizenship — without amending the Constitution or defying the court. Until the court revisits the issue, the political branches are solely responsible for overseeing the marketplace, and they have no excuse to delay.
Why buy a visa when you can commission a citizen?
If you doubt that such a marketplace exists, meet the Simpson triplets.
Nearly 20 months ago, Kyla Simpson of St. Augustine, Florida, gave birth to triplet boys as a gestational surrogate for an intended parent she had never met: a single man in China. He never came. Not during the boys’ two months in the NICU, not through the year and a half the Simpsons raised them, and not even when one of the triplets died of RSV.
When the man from China sent two strangers in a black SUV to collect the boys, Simpson refused. Then, she moved to terminate his parental rights, and he resurfaced with a lawyer and an emergency pickup order, which a Florida judge granted. The surviving twins, 20-month-old American citizens, now sit in state care while his attorneys obtain travel documents.
Why would a Chinese man pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for children he has never crossed an ocean to meet? Because he wasn’t buying children. He was buying American citizens.
A surrogate-born child of a foreign national receives a birth certificate, Social Security number, and passport at birth. When the child reaches age 21, he can petition for green cards for his parents and siblings, turning one commissioned pregnancy into chain migration for an entire family, at a fraction of the cost of the half-million-dollar EB-5 investor visa.
Why buy a visa when you can commission a citizen?
Birth tourism in overdrive
This citizenship-for-sale system has three serious dangers.
First, the burgeoning international surrogacy industry is a clear example of immigration fraud and abuse. For example, within days of President Trump signing the executive order on birthright citizenship, the agency Surrogate First issued workaround guidance for prospective parents, explaining that for international clients, “the certainty of their child obtaining U.S. citizenship at birth is a significant factor” in choosing America.
Likewise, Creative Family Connections advertised a “2-step birth certificate process” to guarantee citizenship for the children of foreign clients regardless of executive action. Prior to that, another agency pitched surrogacy as cheaper than the EB-5 investor visa.
RELATED: 1776, not 1608: What the Supreme Court got wrong on birthright citizenship
The co-founder of one California agency told NPR that dual nationality would be “a win-win situation for your children.” A fellow agent admitted many of her clients were “high-level Communist Party officials and celebrities” seeking American citizenship for their children.
Second, the international surrogacy industry is a national security threat that intensifies every year. Children with American passports who are raised under Chinese Communist Party rule can vote as adults in U.S. elections, join our military, work in sensitive research, and even run for president.
Beijing exploits every vulnerability American citizenship offers, whether the parents intend it or not. Why would it ignore this one?
Third, the industry is a child-welfare catastrophe. Authorities found 21 surrogate-born children in the home of a former CCP official tied to immigration fraud and smuggling — discovered only after an infant arrived at a hospital with severe head trauma in Arcadia, California. Chinese billionaire Xu Bo has reportedly commissioned 100 children and counting through American surrogates to build a personal dynasty.
According to data in the American Society for Reproductive Medicine’s own journal, surrogacy cycles commissioned by foreign intended parents surged 78% from 2014 to 2019, from 2,758 to 4,905 embryo transfers a year, with Chinese nationals the largest customer base at 41.7% — quadruple the next country.
More than 107 Chinese-owned surrogacy agencies operate in Southern California alone, many with Mandarin-only marketing and some listing offices in mainland China, where surrogacy is illegal. Indeed, international commercial surrogacy is merely the newest wing of a larger operation. Conventional birth tourism results in an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 annual U.S. births to Chinese nationals — a phenomenon that, according to investigative journalist Peter Schweizer, Chinese sources themselves describe as massive.
Since 2013, he estimates that more than one million “U.S. citizens” are being raised in China because their mothers came here to give birth.
Pulling up anchor
Yes, the Trump v. Barbara majority misread the 14th Amendment, whose author said it excluded “persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens.” A future court should revisit the issue, with the Simpson case as Exhibit A. In the meantime, however, there are concrete actions Congress and the executive branch can take to address birth tourism.
Close the state loophole with federal law. Earlier this year, Florida became the first state to prohibit surrogacy contracts with foreign nationals from adversarial nations, including China, Russia, Iran, and others. But the law does not stop Florida citizens from working with a California-based agency.
We need federal action to shut this market down. As Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) proposed via the SAFE Kids Act and Rep. Scott Perry (R-Penn.) introduced via the Preventing International Surrogacy Exploitation Act, Congress should ban international commercial surrogacy outright by prohibiting foreign nationals from contracting with American surrogates or agencies.
Notably, the vast majority of developed nations — aside from the United States and Ukraine — already have a law like this in place.
RELATED: Where is the outrage over our stolen birthright?
Cut off the travel and count the trade. Congress and the State Department should deny visas to anyone traveling to the U.S. to commission or collect a surrogate-born child. They should also mandate federal reporting, through the CDC or another agency, of every commercial surrogacy contract and resulting live birth, including the client’s nationality.
There is no reason to regulate the export of technology more carefully than the export of our own citizens.
Make the buyer, not the baby, pay the price. Heritage Foundation Vice President Roger Severino has proposed the boldest remedy. Vice President JD Vance has already endorsed Severino’s plan to end birth tourism citizenship in U.S. territories, which China has exploited.
Every solution so far has focused on the “anchor.” Severino’s plan, by contrast, targets the “boat.” Under existing law, the president has broad authority to bar any class of foreign nationals whose entry he deems detrimental to U.S. interests.
He should use that power to give every foreign national without permanent residency who has a child on U.S. soil a simple choice: Relinquish the child’s American citizenship, or never legally set foot in the United States again.
This doesn’t remove citizenship from the children. But it does mean that the parents who refuse would become permanently ineligible for any visa, asylum, refugee status, or temporary protected status; any lottery or family-based entry; or any future path to residency or citizenship, including through marriage to an American.
The Supreme Court says these children are citizens. Very well — then act like it.
American citizens should not be purchased for export, warehoused unclaimed, or shipped beyond the reach of American courts. The 14th Amendment was written so that no one born on American soil could be bought or sold. It’s time to extend that same protection to children born via international commercial surrogacy schemes.
Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at the American Mind.
Trump Moves To Shut Down Birth Tourism Industry After SCOTUS Affirmed Squatter Citizenship
'Citizenship is not a commodity to be acquired through calculated exploitation and evasion of the immigration laws, such as by entering the United States on a nonimmigrant visa for the purpose of giving birth within the Nation’s borders.'Trump takes another BIG swing at birthright citizenship and birth tourism
President Donald Trump issued two executive orders on Thursday intended to end birth tourism to the U.S. and narrow birthright citizenship.
The president signed the orders with his top aide, Stephen Miller, at his side at the White House in front of reporters.
'What that means is that no one in the world is anymore allowed to obtain a visa for this fraudulent purpose.'
Miller explained that the first order would "expand the definitions of people who were ineligible for birthright citizenship" in response to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that kept the policy active.
Those who are newly excluded from birthright citizenship include "alien enemies of the United States, members of foreign terrorist organizations, and large categories of people who lobby and act on behalf of foreign governments."
He went on to explain the second order.
"The second action that he's taking, which is especially historic, is for the first time ever in American history to ban birth tourism," Miller said.
"The idea that people come here pretending to be a tourist, pretending to be a visitor, saying they want to go to Disneyland, they want to go visit a monument or go to a national park," he added.
"But the real reason they're here is to have a child, to make that child an automatic citizen," Miller said, "to leave our country, and then have a U.S. citizen child that gives them access under this broken system to welfare benefits, ultimately to the voting booth, and all the other rights and privileges that belong solely to Americans."
Miller touted all of the president's actions to safeguard American citizenship and listed this order as one of the top three decisions.
"So that practice of birth tourism is, as of the signing of this order, hereby banned," he continued. "And what that means is that no one in the world is anymore allowed to obtain a visa for this fraudulent purpose."
Trump also criticized the Supreme Court ruling on birthright citizenship.
"I thought we were going to win it at the Supreme Court," he said. "Unfortunately we had a bad decision, very unfair decision. Our country suffers because of it. And we’re ending it a different way."
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council immediately criticized the orders.
"This new order is far less sweeping than the original, but like the first order, seemingly violates the Constitution," he said on social media.
"As an initial matter, the new EO aims to deny citizenship to children born to two noncitizen parents where ONE parent (not both) falls within one of the EO's new categories," he added. "This alone may well be a violation of the 14th Amendment, which cares about the status of both parents."
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!The SAVE America Act cannot save this electorate
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin recently promised to focus immigration enforcement on criminal aliens. At a National Governors Association forum with Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R), Mullin also noted that the United States had naturalized nearly 900,000 immigrants during the previous 12 months.
That number should have set off alarms.
The SAVE America Act addresses a game of inches. An immigration moratorium addresses a game of miles.
Republicans are consumed with preventing noncitizens from voting illegally. That problem is real, but the much larger electoral transformation is occurring legally, as millions of immigrants become citizens and acquire the right to vote. The SAVE America Act addresses a game of inches. An immigration moratorium addresses a game of miles.
As I have argued before, an immigration moratorium would do more to shape the country’s political future than the SAVE America Act. The White House, however, has shown little interest in confronting legal immigration at that scale.
After Mullin cited the latest figure, I reviewed the Department of Homeland Security’s naturalization data by year, country of origin, and demographic trend. I have long examined the size and composition of America’s green-card flow, but naturalization is the point at which immigration becomes electoral power.
Naturalization is a lagging indicator. The Hart-Celler Act drove immigration sharply higher beginning in the 1970s, but naturalizations did not surge until the mid-1990s. Since 1996, the United States has naturalized roughly 21 million people. From 2015 through 2024 alone — excluding the nearly 900,000 Mullin cited for the latest year — the total was 7.9 million.
Outside the COVID disruption, annual naturalizations have climbed from roughly 500,000 to 700,000 toward a range of 750,000 to 900,000.
The historical contrast is striking. As recently as 1984, fewer than 200,000 immigrants became citizens. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the annual average remained in the low 100,000s.
Even after the great immigration wave of 1880 to 1920, annual naturalizations generally peaked between 100,000 and 200,000. The high points were 217,000 in 1919, 233,000 in 1928, and 224,000 in 1929.
During the 39 years from 1908 through 1946, the United States issued about 6.2 million naturalizations. During the 39 years from 1986 through 2024, it naturalized 24.1 million people — nearly four times as many.
The modern citizenship wave has therefore dwarfed the one that followed the great wave, and it has continued for three decades with no end in sight.
The top-line numbers tell only part of the story.
RELATED: Ceuta is America’s border warning
Roughly 90% of immigrants during the great wave came from Europe. In 2024, by my estimate, only about 10% of the 818,000 people naturalized came from Europe or Canada.
Mexico supplied the largest single group, with 107,670 new citizens. Latin America as a whole accounted for roughly 348,000, or 43% of all naturalizations. That four-decade pattern has helped make Spanish a durable second language across large parts of the country.
India supplied 49,700 new citizens and China 29,200. Those flows have remained substantial for decades. The United States is not merely adding population. It is importing millions of people shaped by political systems, religious traditions, and social assumptions far removed from the country’s historic norms.
The same question applies to immigration from Muslim-majority countries. DHS does not report naturalization by religion, so no precise count exists. But tabulating immigrants from the 49 predominantly Muslim countries I have identified previously yields 119,170 naturalizations in 2024 — about 15% of the total — and roughly 1.15 million over the past decade.
The largest 2024 totals included 12,200 from Pakistan, 11,600 from Bangladesh, 8,100 from Iraq, 7,100 from Iran, 7,000 from Egypt, and 6,800 from Afghanistan.
These numbers have not necessarily crested. The central question is whether naturalization policy is producing citizens with a durable attachment to the Constitution, the nation, and the obligations contained in the oath of allegiance.
One imam in Sterling Heights, Michigan, recently boasted that concentrated Muslim voting in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan could swing a presidential election. He was describing the political power that large-scale naturalization fosters.
Many naturalized immigrants become patriotic Americans. But a country naturalizing close to 900,000 people each year cannot assume assimilation will occur automatically, especially when so many arrive from societies with different political values and weak traditions of constitutional government.
This is all legal! It is also why the Republican fixation on a relatively small number of unlawful noncitizen votes misses the larger question.
The figures do not include the long-term electoral effect of birthright citizenship among children born to illegal immigrants, temporary visa holders, and legal permanent residents.
Pew Research estimated that 240,000 babies were born in 2023 to families in which neither parent was a legal permanent resident. The Center for Immigration Studies estimated that 72,000 children were born to tourists, foreign students, and other visitors in 2016. A separate CIS analysis suggests that 225,000 to 250,000 children were born in 2023 to families with at least one legal permanent resident.
RELATED: Trump-hating Republican governors conspire with Democrats to smuggle in even more migrants
Those estimates come from different years and categories and should not be treated as a precise annual total. They nevertheless show how mass immigration, combined with automatic birthright citizenship, extends the electoral consequences for generations.
Legal immigration is producing as many as 900,000 new voters each year through naturalization. Birthright citizenship may add hundreds of thousands more future voters annually. Even if Congress shut off immigration tomorrow, the naturalization wave already in the pipeline would continue for years.
Illegal voting can decide a close election and should be prevented. But the scale of legal electoral change produced by immigration dwarfs the problem the SAVE America Act is designed to solve.
Any politician who campaigns on the SAVE America Act while refusing to support an immigration moratorium is missing the forest for the trees.
The SAVE America Act addresses a game of inches. An immigration moratorium addresses a game of miles.
Migrants Invaded Ceuta Because A Court Encouraged Them. SCOTUS Just Did The Same Here
What's happening in Spain is a preview of what America can expect after our own Supreme Court's birthright citizenship ruling.White House, Congress Need To Assert Their Dominance Over Supreme Court On Birthplace Citizenship
The Supreme Court was comfortable overturning an executive order, but if the White House and Congress passed legislation, it would be two branches against one.
A bulletproof vest does not define Amy Coney Barrett’s jurisprudence
Last week, while testifying before Congress in support of additional funding for Supreme Court security, Justice Amy Coney Barrett described how escalating threats against the justices have affected her family.
She recalled that her then-12-year-old son once asked why she needed to wear a bulletproof vest.
Barrett should not have to defend her integrity because her children are frightened. She did not take an oath to place her family in danger.
Some commentators seized on the story as evidence that threats may have altered Barrett’s judicial outlook. They suggest that fear for her life — and the lives of her family members — has compromised her objectivity or influenced how she approaches cases before the court.
That claim does not withstand scrutiny.
The critics are searching for an explanation for the occasions when Barrett has diverged from Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. They point to her positions in cases involving birthright citizenship, Mississippi ballot deadlines, and tariffs.
Those disagreements are fair subjects for criticism. But any serious assessment of Barrett’s record must consider the full body of her work, not a handful of outcomes that frustrated conservatives.
Barrett has frequently joined her conservative colleagues. She was part of the majority in Slaughter, an important constitutional decision affirming executive authority. She has stood firmly behind protections for women’s and girls’ sports. She has also joined decisions upholding immigration enforcement.
Critics may challenge any justice’s reasoning in any case. They should not invent a psychological explanation that ignores the justice’s broader record.
The suggestion that threats have softened Barrett’s jurisprudence also rests on a false comparison.
Some argue that military personnel and law-enforcement officers routinely accept danger as part of their work, so Supreme Court justices should do the same. But soldiers and police officers enter professions in which physical danger is expected. Supreme Court justices do not.
RELATED:Justice Amy Coney Barrett describes SWATTING attack against her family
Context is crucial. Children of military personnel or law-enforcement officers generally understand that their parents’ work carries risk. My father served on a Secret Service protective detail. When he came home and hung his bulletproof vest in the closet, it did not seem unusual.
My mother taught nursery school. Had she been forced to wear a bulletproof vest because of threats against her classroom, that would have been deeply unsettling.
Barrett’s children did not grow up believing that their mother’s judicial service would make her a target. No one should expect them to remain unfazed when she comes home from the Supreme Court wearing body armor. Nor should anyone condemn Barrett for discussing their fear in public.
The underlying situation is disgraceful.
No justice should need a bulletproof vest to perform the duties of the office. Sadly, the days when Justice Antonin Scalia could attend daily Mass alone on Capitol Hill, unnoticed and unbothered, are gone.
Congress will probably approve the court’s request for additional security funding. It should.
Congress can also do more to reduce the political pressure placed on the judiciary.
For decades, lawmakers have avoided difficult policy decisions and allowed major national disputes to migrate into the courts. Congress increasingly leaves questions involving immigration, elections, executive power, abortion, and social policy to judges rather than resolving them through legislation.
That abdication turns every Supreme Court term into a national political showdown. It raises the stakes of each vacancy, each argument, and each ruling. It also encourages activists to treat justices as unelected legislators rather than judges interpreting the law.
Congress cannot eliminate threats by passing more bills. It can, however, reclaim its constitutional responsibility and stop forcing the court to settle every dispute elected lawmakers lack the courage to address.
Resolving contentious questions through the legislative process would not remove controversy from public life. It would reduce the pressure on nine justices to decide matters that properly belong to elected representatives.
Until Congress changes course, the court and its members will need more protection.
Barrett should not have to defend her integrity because her children are frightened. She did not take an oath to place her family in danger. A mother’s concern for her children does not prove judicial weakness.
It proves only that the threats are real.
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