OPINION:
As the Supreme Court weighs President Trump’s executive order on limiting U.S. citizenship today, reports indicate that the White House is wary that the court will strike down its attempt to end birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants and temporary visitors.
Mr. Trump predicted on social media that the court “will find a way to come to the wrong conclusion” on the meaning of the 14th Amendment. He elaborated in another post that “birthright citizenship is not about rich people from China, and the rest of the world, who want their children, and for hundreds of thousands more, FOR PAY, to ridiculously become citizens of the United States of America.”
No matter how the court decides, Mr. Trump is right about one thing: Other nations are taking advantage of the U.S. birthright citizenship clause through birthright tourism or surrogacy, which is undermining our national security. It’s a constitutional loophole our Founding Fathers never would have imagined when they crafted the 14th Amendment at the end of the Civil War to include the citizenship of babies of slaves.
Last year, The Wall Street Journal detailed how Chinese elites and billionaires are going outside of China, where domestic surrogacy is illegal, to have large numbers of U.S.-born infants. Xu Bo, a maker of fantasy video games, has said he has more than 100 children born through surrogacy in the U.S. These children are automatically issued a Social Security card and become U.S. citizens. They are then sent back to China to live under the communist regime as Chinese.
Wang Huiwu, a wealthy Chinese executive, hired models and others as egg donors to have 10 girls, with the aim of one day marrying them off to powerful men, The Journal reported, citing people close to the executive’s education company.
“A thriving mini-industry of American surrogacy agencies, law firms, clinics, delivery agencies and nanny services — even to pick up the newborns from hospitals — has risen to accommodate the international demand, permitting parents to ship their genetic material abroad and get a baby delivered back, at a cost of up to $200,000 per child,” The Journal described of the racket.
International parents’ use of U.S. surrogacy quadrupled from 2014 to 2019, researchers at Emory University found. During the COVID-19 pandemic emergency, the number dropped because of global travel restrictions. Forty-one percent of international surrogate parents from 2014 to 2020 were Chinese.
Even if the Supreme Court rules against Mr. Trump’s executive order, there is hope. Last year, Rick Scott, Florida Republican, introduced the SAFE KIDS Act, which bans commercial surrogacy for foreign nationals from certain countries, including China.
He and Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a fellow Republican, have urged the Department of Justice to investigate surrogacy centers operated by foreign nationals within the U.S.
Still, nothing seems to pass out of Congress these days, no matter how bipartisan the legislation.
Therefore, Mr. Trump has taken on the issue himself. Only the Supreme Court stands in the way of what should be a no-brainer: outlawing foreign surrogacy and birthright tourism.
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