By Nkiruka Nnorom with agency report
Pregnant women could be banned from entering the United States of America, under plans being considered by President Donald Trump after the Supreme Court judgment that struck down his ban on birthright citizenship.
The potential ban would mark a renewed attempt to restrict birthright citizenship, a practice the Trump administration said allows foreigners to travel to the US late in pregnancy to secure citizenship for their children.
While the practice exists, experts say it is a tiny fraction of overall births. Though the US government does not track the number of babies born to foreign visitors, but estimates suggest the figure could be between 20,000 and 26,000 per year.
The Trump administration had argued that birthright citizenship, a constitutional concept that grants citizenship to all babies born in the US, encouraged illegal immigration and rewards illegal aliens who not only violate the immigration laws, but also jump in front of those who follow the rules.
Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to the president, said the White House would take “a hard look” at a ban on pregnant foreign women from travelling to the US.
The White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security said: “You have to now think very carefully about who you let into your country, even on a temporary basis because of the possibility for birth tourism.
“That people come here just to have babies on American soil, and that baby gets to be a citizen for life.
“If a person comes here nine months pregnant to go and look around at some things, in a couple of weeks that is the mother of a lifetime American citizen and a direct line into American cash and welfare for the rest of that child’s life. There are a lot of things we need to have a hard look at.”
After Tuesday’s ruling, Abigail Jackson, the White House Spokesman, said Mr. Trump remained “totally committed to protecting the value of natural-born American citizenship,” adding that the president directed Congress to take immediate action to address the issue.
“The Department of Justice will also prioritise investigations of birth tourism schemes. The Trump administration has many tools to safeguard American citizenship,” she added.
Markwayne Mullin, Head of the Department of Homeland Security, also suggested restrictions on pregnant visitors were under consideration.
“There are tourist visas that they get to come into the US or into our territories just simply to give birth. They’ll come in the eighth month, maybe one, two, three weeks left, give birth here,” he said on Fox and Friends.
“They have a child who may move back to China, raise the person in a communist regime even though they’re a citizen of the US and they come back over here, and in some cases, they go to universities, stealing intellectual property. It’s absolutely been a national security issue.”
The Supreme Court judgment struck down Trump’s Day One executive order declaring that children born to parents who are in the US illegally or temporarily are not US citizens.
The divided court ruled 6-3 that denying automatic citizenship to babies born on US soil was unconstitutional and violated the 14th Amendment. It was the first major test of the 14th Amendment in more than a century as Trump sought to use presidential powers to reshape what it meant to be an American citizen.
