Up to 300,000 children were born in the United States to foreign tourists over the last ten years, an immigration researcher told Congress on Tuesday.
Steven Camarota, Director of Research at the Center for Immigration Studies, testified before a House Oversight Committee task force led by Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) on the scale of birth tourism — the practice of foreign nationals traveling to the U.S. specifically to give birth so their children receive automatic American citizenship.
“The best estimate we have made at the Center for Immigration Studies of the possible number of births to tourists is 20,000 to 26,000 a year, though that estimate is based on data from 2016 and 2017,” Camarota told the committee.
Some might think the number is small relative to the overall number of births in the U.S. annually; however, the effect is cumulative. Assuming the numbers we estimated in the past continued, some 200,000 to 300,000 children were born to birth tourists over the last decade — hardly a trivial number.
Camarota pointed to recent polling showing only 25 percent of Americans support automatically granting citizenship to the U.S.-born children of foreign tourists.
“The sense among most Americans that birth tourism is a problem stems, I believe, directly from the idea that it turns American citizenship, one of the most valuable things in the world, into something that can be obtained under false pretenses,” Camarota said.
He argued the practice creates a distinct problem separate from birthright citizenship debates involving illegal immigrants.
“There are many problems with granting automatic citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants. However, at least the children of illegal immigrants typically grow up in the United States,” Camarota said. “This is generally not so for children born to birth tourists.”
“And yet, as American citizens, they are able to enter the U.S. with no prior screening, attend college and receive financial aid, work at almost any job they choose — even with the federal government — and access all public benefits immediately upon arrival,” he continued.
