Supreme Court Must Stop the Birth Tourism Epidemic

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on President Trump’s Executive Order ending birthright citizenship — an issue so important to the sovereignty of the United States that Trump became the first sitting president in history to attend a Supreme Court hearing.

For more than a century, the United States has granted citizenship to virtually everyone born on American soil. But contrary to popular belief, this idea of citizenship by “birthright” is not explicitly written into the Constitution or even federal law. Instead, the idea that anyone born on U.S. soil is entitled to all the benefits of U.S. citizenship arose out of a blatant misreading of the 14th Amendment.

The 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868, states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside” (emphasis added). The amendment was passed to affirm that freed slaves are indeed full citizens.

But open borders immigration advocates have used the Amendment to justify granting citizenship to the children of illegal aliens, despite the fact that these individuals, and by extension their children, remain subject to the political jurisdiction and allegiance of their home nations.

On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order abolishing this practice. The order states that for a child born on U.S. soil to be an American citizen, at least one parent must be a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident. The order targets children born to illegal aliens as well as temporary visa holders, such as children whose parents are in the U.S. lawfully, but on temporary status, such as student visas, work visas, or tourist visas.

The problem that Trump is addressing is not theoretical or trivial. An estimated 250,000 children are born in the U.S. to illegal alien parents and long-term temporary visitors every year, according to the Center for Immigration Studies. That accounts for seven percent of all U.S. births.

Predictably, Trump’s order was hit with a torrent of legal challenges, and it has now made its way to the Supreme Court. The case hinges on the meaning of one phrase: “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

Proponents of birthright citizenship have often simply ignored this phrase, treating the first part of the 14th Amendment – “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” – as absolute. As a result, the opening sentence of the Amendment remains one of the most misunderstood yet consequential lines in our Constitution.

While we are taught that mere presence on American soil is an instant golden ticket to U.S. citizenship, a deeper look at “consent theory” reveals a different story.

Consent theory holds that birthright citizenship requires more than just being born on U.S. soil – it requires mutual allegiance or consent between the individual (or their parents) and the United States. “Subject to the jurisdiction thereof” means full political membership, not merely being subject to U.S. laws, as Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson erroneously suggested on Wednesday.

Under this principle, citizenship for newborn children shouldn’t be treated as a reward for those who break our laws or merely temporarily visit our shores for work or leisure; it is a mutual contract that both parties must willingly enter into.

Without that mutual agreement, an individual may be physically in the United States, and even subject to the nation’s laws during their stay, but they are legally outside the political community, as they would lack the deep jurisdictional bond required for citizenship. This would naturally extend to their children born on American soil.

Yet, this misunderstanding and misapplication of the 14th Amendment is precisely what the “birth tourism” industry currently exploits.

When affluent citizens from an adversarial power such as China can simply board a flight, give birth on our soil, and secure an American passport for their child before flying home, the very concept of national identity is hollowed out and citizenship becomes meaningless.

Even worse, if American citizens can be literally manufactured via IVF and surrogacy companies at the behest of a foreign government such as China, then birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment becomes a national security threat.

The scale of this exploitation is what writer Peter Schweizer describes as “civilizational warfare.”

Take, for example, the American territory of Saipan, which is located around 2,000 miles from Shanghai, China. According to Schweizer’s book, “The Invisible Coup,” more than 70 percent of all newborns on the island are the children of Chinese “birth tourists.”

These parents deliberately exploit a 45-day visa-free visitation rule for Chinese nationals – an Obama-era loophole – that turned the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory, into a “tropical maternity ward.”

Determining the exact number of these “birthright” citizens is difficult because the federal government does not directly track birth tourism. However, the estimates are staggering.

According to Schweizer, Chinese officials suggest 55,000 of their citizens participate annually, while other scholars put the figure closer to 100,000. This has created what Schweizer calls the “Manchurian Generation”: an estimated 750,000 to 1.5 million “American citizens” who are currently being raised and indoctrinated in mainland China.

These children attend CCP-controlled schools where they are taught to hate Western Civilization and are brainwashed into the cult of a hostile communist state.

Collectively, that’s millions of individuals raised in China who, because of our current interpretation of the 14th Amendment, have the right to return to the U.S. at any time and gain access to America’s social welfare programs – and elections.

The industry facilitating this is sophisticated and brazen.

As noted by Chadwick Moore in The New York Post, companies like “Global Baby 8” openly advertise “Supreme” packages that start at $45,000. These packages include luxury villas, private chefs, and “visa specialists” who coach expectant mothers on how to deceive U.S. Customs and Border Protection by wearing loose-fitting clothes or flying through less-scrutinized ports like Las Vegas or Honolulu.

Another company, China Mifubaby Group, offers services catering to Korean and Japanese mothers-to-be. Their website advertises “expedited visas,” “American citizenship,” and “short direct flight distance” to Saipan.

Once on our soil, the exploitation continues. Some wealthy birth tourists are instructed to lie to hospitals, claiming they are indigent to receive reduced medical rates, while others simply flee the country without paying their hospital bills.

Even more alarming is the shift into the “manufacturing” of citizens through the largely unregulated American surrogacy industry.

Schweizer’s book highlights the case of Guojun Xuan, a businessman with ties to the CCP, who allegedly operated a “surrogacy command center” out of a $4.1 million mansion in California.

Authorities found upwards of 21 children connected to Xuan, born through a multi-state “embryo pipeline” involving American surrogate mothers. This practice is reportedly being integrated into the Chinese government’s “Belt & Road Initiative,” with official expos held in China to match CCP elites with American “carriers.”

The transactional nature of these births is chilling. American surrogates have reported that these Chinese clients often show “no sense of joy” upon receiving the child, viewing the process as a cold, strategic acquisition. In some cases, a third party is sent from China to pick up the newborn.

The ultimate goal of this “Manchurian Generation,” as explained by Schweizer, is a deliberate long-term demographic and political shift within the United States.

When these “American” children turn 18, they can vote in U.S. elections. When they turn 21, they gain the power of “chain migration,” allowing them to sponsor their parents – many of whom are pillars of the Chinese elite, intelligence officers, and government ministers – for legal permanent residency.

It is this combination of birthright citizenship and chain migration that directly threatens the sovereignty of the United States.

Of the 574,000 new green card holders from abroad in 2024, 77 percent arrived via this chain migration process. This allows an adversarial power such as China to bypass standard immigration scrutiny and “inject” millions of loyalists into the American body politic.

This tidal wave of foreign influence is set to hit American society in full force by 2030, as the first major wave of these “birth tourism” children reach adulthood.

As President Trump correctly asserted in his March 19 brief, the “main object” of the Citizenship Clause in the 14th Amendment was to “grant citizenship to freed slaves and their children.”

What began as an effort to correct for the injustices of slavery has now been weaponized by foreign and domestic elements to subvert the very sovereignty of the nation itself.

The Supreme Court has the opportunity to ensure that American citizenship remains a bond of mutual allegiance and inheritance, rather than a Constitutional loophole to be exploited by trespassers or a frivolous commodity to be harvested by our adversaries.

If the “consent of the governed” means anything, it must begin with the right of the American people, as a sovereign political community, to determine who belongs to our national family and who doesn’t.

Adam Johnston is a senior contributor to The Federalist whose work has been featured in The Blaze and the Daily Caller. He is also the creator of the Substack publication “Conquest Theory” where he regularly writes about politics, history, philosophy, and technology. You can find him on X @adamkjohnston.