A researcher who studies immigration policy told a House committee this week that as many as 300,000 children were born in the United States over the last ten years to foreign tourists who traveled specifically to give birth on American soil.
Steven Camarota, Director of Research at the Center for Immigration Studies, gave the estimate Tuesday during a House Oversight Committee task force hearing led by Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX). The hearing focused on so-called birth tourism, in which foreign visitors or temporary visa holders come to the U.S. for the purpose of delivering a child, which automatically grants that child 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 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 raises different concerns than birthright citizenship granted to children of illegal immigrants, who he said typically grow up in the country.
“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 added.
