“The first American newborn of 2025 was welcomed in the early morning of January 1. That child was born not to American parents, but to Chinese citizens,” testified Government Accountability Institute president Peter Schweizer to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.
“The mother had deliberately traveled to US soil — in this case, the territory of Saipan in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands — to ensure that her child received automatic US citizenship under current interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment,” Schweizer told the committee.
“This is the practice known as birth tourism,” Schweizer said. He exhaustively described the practice in his latest #1 bestseller The Invisible Coup, which shows that the Communist government of China has been encouraging this practice by its elites for the last fifteen years, resulting in “staggering” numbers of Chinese babies born in the US then quickly whisked back to be raised and indoctrinated in China.
“The scale of this exploitation is staggering, yet the U.S. federal government does not systematically track it,” Schweizer testified. “Chinese officials have estimated 50,000 of their citizens per year engage in birth tourism; scholars such as Australian professor Salvatore Babones suggest the number is closer to 100,000 annually, potentially resulting in millions of new elite, American “citizens” reared and acculturated in Communist China,” Schweizer told senators.
Based on these estimates, at least 750,000—and possibly up to 1.5 million—Chinese nationals now hold US citizenship by birth on American soil,” Schweizer said.
The book chapter documenting this is called “The Manchurian Generation.”
“These individuals grow up in China, often educated in CCP-controlled schools with distorted views of US history, values, and culture,” he said. “They have no lived connection or demonstrated allegiance to our country, yet they possess full rights as U.S. citizens: the ability to vote in elections, relocate here at will, and—upon turning 21— sponsor their parents as permanent residents.”
Schweizer was part of a panel of experts convened to discuss legislation to address Birthright Citizenship for Illegal Aliens and Tourists. Upon taking office in 2025, President Donald Trump’s administration issued an executive order that federal law be interpreted that “the privilege of United States citizenship does not automatically extend to persons born in the United States: (1) when that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth, or (2) when that person’s mother’s presence in the United States at the time of said person’s birth was lawful but temporary (such as, but not limited to, visiting the United States under the auspices of the Visa Waiver Program or visiting on a student, work, or tourist visa) and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.
The hearing largely focused on the legal meaning of the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause, which extends birthright citizenship to persons “who were born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” (emphasis added) The US Supreme Court is currently considering a legal challenge to Trump’s order based on the second portion of that clause, and the High Court’s ruling is expected later in the spring.
Schweizer’s testimony was requested because The Invisible Coup documents the “industrial” scale use of birth tourism by Chinese nationals and also by Russians of this loophole. The book argues that this happens in two ways. First, Chinese women come to the US on tourist visas and give birth to children in facilities run by Chinese companies, and they and their newborns are returned to China as soon as the baby is able to travel. Second, the book identified more than 170 surrogacy companies in the southern California area alone that arrange for American women to be paid to carry the babies of Chinese citizens. Schweizer told the committee that his research found that often, the surrogate mothers never actually meet their child’s Chinese parents, and the baby is collected by a third party representing the surrogacy company.
Taken together, both ways mean that “roughly 1 million birthright US citizens are being raised in China today,” Schweizer told the panel. He also noted that China had used similar tactic in Hong Kong years earlier before the Hong Kong government made the practice illegal.
Democrats on the committee and one of its witnesses, Prof. Amanda Frost of the University of Virginia, responded that US border enforcement policy is to identify obviously pregnant women coming into the US and subject them to greater scrutiny. Schweizer pointed out, however, that Democratic administrations have told border agents to ignore it, a policy also reversed by the Trump administration.
“The challenge is that rules and regulations are subject to manipulation,” Schweizer said in response. “The problem is that under certain administrations, the law was not being enforced.”
Sen. Schmitt asked Schweizer whether the Chinese Communist Party is encouraging this.
“We can only look at their actions,” Schweizer replied. “They run articles in party-controlled media encouraging this practice.”
Video of the full Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on the Constitution is below:
