The Trump administration will intensify its fight against “birth tourism”, consisting of foreigners giving birth in the United States so that their child will be American, the Minister of Justice said on Wednesday the day after a decision by the Supreme Court protecting the rights of the soil.
• Also read: Soil law: the Supreme Court rejects the challenge by Donald Trump
The predominantly conservative Court on Tuesday overturned a decree taken by Donald Trump on the first day of his second term removing land rights for the children of illegal immigrants.
Children born in the United States to parents “unlawfully or temporarily present” are “citizens by birth under the 14th Amendment” of the Constitution, the Court concluded.
“From the Department of Justice’s perspective, this will obviously involve focusing our prosecutors and law enforcement partners on birth tourism, which is a booming industry and will continue to be a booming industry, given the Supreme Court’s decision,” Acting Justice Minister Todd Blanche said at a news conference.
Mr. Blanche was responding to a question about the measures planned by the Trump administration following this decision.
“There are other things that the Department of Homeland Security and the government can do in the visa process to try to minimize or limit the opportunity for people to come here, not to visit and do what they declare in their tourist visa, but to have a baby who can then be a U.S. citizen,” he added.
As of Tuesday, after the Supreme Court’s ruling, the Ministry of Justice announced that it was going to “make prosecutions against birth tourism a priority” and published its instructions to ministry officials to fight against this phenomenon which concerns “thousands of foreigners each year”.
The Trump administration insists on this “birth tourism”, particularly from China, to justify its attempt to call into question land rights. But specialists emphasize that the phenomenon remains marginal, compared to the more than 250,000 annual births of children of illegal immigrants or temporary residents in the United States.
