Sen. Rick Scott says China has found a way to “weaponize” America’s birthright citizenship policy by arranging to have babies born in the U.S. — earning automatic citizenship — then raised abroad, without American values.
Usually, that involves birth tourism, where a woman will come on a legal short-term visa to deliver a baby, who is then a citizen by dint of the birthright policy.
In its more extreme form, Chinese families are paying American women to be surrogate mothers.
“Communist China is our adversary; it’s high time we actually acted like it and stopped letting them weaponize our immigration laws against us — regardless of how the Supreme Court rules on the birthright question,” Mr. Scott, Florida Republican, told “Seen, Heard & Whispered.”
His Stopping Adversarial Foreign Exploitation of Kids in Domestic Surrogacy (SAFE KIDS) Act would create criminal penalties for third parties who facilitate surrogate contracts with people from foreign countries of concern.
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The legislation cites a report from The Wall Street Journal out of Arcadia, California, that uncovered a Chinese couple contracting with multiple American women to be surrogates for their children.
When authorities showed up at the residence, they found more than 15 3-year-old children with shaved heads being cared for by nannies.
Mr. Trump has tried to rein in birthright citizenship, though it’s not clear how his executive order would affect surrogacy pregnancies where the egg and sperm are from a nonresident mother and father, but the “gestational carrier” is an American citizen on U.S. soil.
His order is facing legal hurdles, with the Supreme Court sounding a skeptical note during oral arguments over the policy this month.
Mr. Scott said Chinese surrogacy is a matter of national security concern. He pointed to federal charges brought against a brother and sister accused of placing an explosive device at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. Both suspects are children of illegal immigrants from China, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
“This is a clear national security threat. Thank God these two were caught before it was too late, but it is high time to confront the problem of Chinese birth tourism and act quickly so this never happens again,” Mr. Scott said.
“My SAFE KIDS Act puts a stop to communist China and other foreign adversaries’ efforts to abuse the system and harm children, women and our national security. It’s a human rights and national security threat if we don’t get this done,” he said.
• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.
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