By Ado Oyeyemi
The administration of United States President Donald Trump has renewed its campaign against so-called “birth tourism,” warning foreign nationals seeking to travel to the country for the purpose of giving birth that they may no longer obtain visas for that purpose.
The White House on Saturday highlighted comments by Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Adviser, Stephen Miller, who said the administration had effectively outlawed the practice through a new executive order.
Miller said the measure ranked among the administration’s most important actions, describing birth tourism as a serious abuse of the US immigration system.
He said the policy meant foreigners could no longer secure American visas for what the administration considers a fraudulent purpose.
The term “birth tourism” generally refers to foreign nationals travelling to the United States with the intention of giving birth there, with the expectation that their children will acquire US citizenship under the country’s birthright citizenship framework.
The development followed Trump’s signing of two executive orders targeting birthright citizenship, including one specifically aimed at birth tourism.
The latest actions came after the US Supreme Court rejected an earlier attempt by the Trump administration to end birthright citizenship through an executive order issued at the beginning of his second term.
Miller, while explaining how immigration officials would distinguish ordinary tourists from people travelling specifically to give birth, referred to provisions of the US Immigration and Nationality Act.
He argued that applicants who claim to be visiting as tourists while allegedly intending to give birth in the US would be committing fraud against the American government.
Miller said such applicants would therefore be denied visas if their actual intention was to travel to the country for childbirth.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that large numbers of foreigners exploit the US immigration system through birth tourism, although the exact scale of the practice remains disputed.
During Supreme Court arguments in April, US Solicitor General John Sauer reportedly acknowledged that the government did not have a definitive figure for the number of people involved.
Sauer cited various media estimates and other materials that have put the number of birth tourists at very high levels, including reports involving wealthy foreigners and organised birth tourism businesses.
Trump’s latest immigration measures also seek to restrict birthright citizenship for certain categories of people, including individuals described by the administration as enemies of the United States, members of foreign terrorist organisations and people acting on behalf of foreign governments.
Defending the latest measures, Trump criticised the Supreme Court’s earlier position on birthright citizenship, describing the decision as unfortunate and saying his administration was making adjustments in response.
Trump has long argued that birthright citizenship has been exploited, saying his administration intends to prevent what he considers abuses of the system.
Citizenship by birth varies across countries. While some nations grant citizenship primarily on the basis of being born within their territory, others confer nationality through the citizenship of a child’s parents. Some countries operate a combination of both principles.
Meanwhile, Miller has also linked immigration to reported reading difficulties among schoolchildren in New York.
His comments followed a report by the New York Post that more than half of pupils in grades three to five failed to attain proficiency in a basic reading assessment.
Responding to the report on X, Miller claimed that a significant proportion of New York children were either foreign-born or children of migrants, adding that most of that group were migrants from developing countries.
He suggested that immigration was an underlying factor in the debate over educational performance.
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However, Miller did not provide a source for the figures he cited, and his post did not establish evidence linking immigration directly to the reading performance highlighted in the report.
