Jumping ahead of the Supreme Court’s decision, Tennessee GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn on Tuesday announced that she had introduced legislation to end birthright tourism.
Birth tourism is when expectant mothers come to the U.S. and have their babies, resulting in the babies getting U.S. citizenship.
“These individuals have the baby here,” Blackburn said on the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show. “They stay until they get Social Security information and can show that the baby was born here, get that birth certificate, get that social security number, and then they exit the country. Then that child can come back, and within 20 years, they are able to start migrating their family here.”
Blackburn said that this practice is an industry and is pushed by Russia and China.
“We know this is accounting for over 33,000 births a year, just this one industry,” she said. “So my bill would deal with this and put some penalties and parameters around this activity of birthright tourism.”
Blackburn said that U.S. citizenship is not for sale.
“Our citizenship isn’t for sale, and you can’t go through and do this and have people come in and have a baby for the purpose of saying the child is a citizen, exit the country and then use it in that manner,” she said.
