China’s birth tourism is a “very organized exploitation of birthright citizenship,” warns author and investigative journalist Peter Schweizer. “China’s own government estimates 50,000 Chinese babies are born in the United States each year for this purpose.” And some private estimates believe the number could be double that amount.
Schweizer is the author of The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon, which documented China’s systematic, “industrial scale” abuse of America’s 14th Amendment right to birthright citizenship for “all persons born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
Among other bombshell findings in the #1 New York Times bestseller, there are more than 1,000 companies in China advertising birth tourism services to members of the Chinese military and political elite. These typically include airfare and accommodations for pregnant mothers in a US territory such as Saipan in the Pacific, where they give birth, acquire a birth certificate for their newborn child, then return home to raise the child in China.
Appearing on Sinclair Broadcasting’s program The National Desk, Schweizer was asked by host Dee Dee Gratton to respond to a statement from US border czar Tom Homan: “I’m aware we’ve got nationals from China and Russia coming here by the thousands, having a baby. I think it’s one of the biggest national security issues we’re facing right now,” Homan said.
Schweizer agreed. “Foreign elites send their pregnant wives or girlfriends to the United States for the express purpose of giving birth, then they return to their home country of China, Russia, or Mexico, and the child is actually raised there,” Schweizer said. “But, because they spent a day or two in the United States when they were born, they are a US citizen. That means, even though they have no connection to our country, they’re going to be able to vote in our elections. China has exploited this on an industrial scale.”
Gratton raised a recent study done by the Centers for Disease Control that put the total number of annual US births to foreign nationals at a little more than 9,500 births, comprising only 0.26% of total births. “What immigration accountability challenges does this pose for the government if we don’t have a general idea of what these numbers are?” she asked. Schweizer is familiar with the study.
“Their methodology looked at the listed addresses of birth mothers,” he responded. “So, they found something like 9,000 birth mothers who listed foreign addresses as their home address. Ergo, they say there’s only 9,000 birthright citizenship birth tourist mothers.” That fails to capture what is really happening, he said.
“The problem is that the birth tourism companies explicitly tell their clients, ‘Do not list a foreign address on the birth certificate. Use one in the United States.’” Schweizer said. Research by Schweizer’s team at the Government Accountability Institute suggests most mothers fill in the address of the local office of the birth tourism company that arranged for their stay.
“So, they lie about it, and there really is no easy metric to trace this,” Schweizer said. “That’s why I believe this needs further investigation, and why we need prosecution of these birth tourism companies.”
“The question we have to ask ourselves, based on what Tom Homan was saying, is: Are they doing this for our benefit, or for their benefit?”
While China’s use of birth tourism gets most of the attention, Texas Governor Greg Abbott recently investigated a Texas hospital for marketing birth tourism packages in Mexico. Schweizer notes that birthright citizenship has also been exploited by leaders of Mexican drug cartels.
“El Chapo, the leader of one of the Mexican drug cartels, in 2013 sent his wife secretly to Los Angeles so that his twins, when they would be born, would be US citizens,” he said. “The leader of another drug cartel in Mexico right now is a US citizen because similarly, his mother was brought to the United States and gave birth here. Now, you’ve got a US citizen running a foreign drug cartel. That’s the kind of situation that we’re facing.”
Asked for possible reforms, Schweizer calls for prosecuting birth tourism companies for visa fraud, restoring the questioning of pregnant travelers by Customs and Border Patrol agents, and pursuing legislative reform as suggested in Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion in the Trump v. Barbara birthright citizenship case just decided by the Hight Court.
