In anticipation of the Supreme Court’s May 15 birthright citizenship review, consider that the Los Angeles Dodgers’ $700 million superstar Shohei Ohtani and his wife Mamiko Tanaka, Japanese nationals, just welcomed their first child, a girl.
Ohtani chose to have his child born in the U.S. instead of Japan because having American citizenship will be, over her lifetime, advantageous to his baby girl. Think of the foolishness of granting precious citizenship to foreign nationals residing in the country on work or tourist visas in relationships, new or established, that result in births and automatically conferred American citizenship.
Japan, a country whose immigration standards reflect how seriously the nation takes citizenship, has tighter oversight. The Japanese Nationality Law requires at least one parent must be a citizen for the child to qualify for citizenship. The U.S. Congress has written several bills with the same common-sense citizenship requirement. None gained congressional support. President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14160, “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” addressed the obvious flaws in the long-standing misinterpretation of the 14th Amendment. The executive order, announced on Jan. 20 and one of the first President Trump issued, spelled out what citizenship in the Trump administration would require:
“Among the categories of individuals born in the United States and not subject to the jurisdiction thereof, 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.”
A day after President Trump released his executive order, Rep. Brian Babin, R-Tx., chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, introduced The Birthright Citizenship Act to restore the 14th Amendment to its original purpose and end the misuse of birthright citizenship. Babin’s legislation aligns with the executive order and seeks a congressional remedy to the misreading and exploitation of the 14th Amendment.
Center for Immigration Studies’ research found that one out of every 10 births in the United States is to an illegal immigrant mother. Additionally, nearly 400,000 expectant mothers cross the border illegally each year, often with the sole intention to give birth in the U.S. Once granted automatic citizenship, these children can initiate chain migration, opening pathways for extended family members to gain legal residency.
This practice has also fueled a global birth tourism industry, which takes advantage of the current loophole in U.S. immigration laws. Birth tourism is a criminal enterprise that, for an enormous fee, openly allows worldwide temporary visa-holding foreign nationals to stay in their hotels until the women are ready to give birth to a new American citizen. Such hotels, their criminal proprietors, and their pregnant guests who committed visa fraud would be easy targets for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Instead, ICE has winked at birth tourism hotels for years.
An intelligent overhaul of birthright citizenship is imperative. The Biden administration’s open borders admitted about 10 million illegal immigrants and another estimated 2 million got-aways. Those millions represent many more anchor baby citizens and eventual chain migration arrivals.
Crossing the border illegally or as a temporary worker like Ohtani or a tourist and then giving birth on U.S. soil should not entitle the newborns to citizenship.
Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. His column is distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.
