President Donald Trump's administration plans to bar pregnant women form attaining visas for “birth tourism”. The measures to be adopted to curb the number of foreigners who use the visa to “secure automatic permanent citizenship for their children by giving birth on American soil,” is expected to take effect on Friday.
“The integrity of American citizenship must be protected,” White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said in a statement. Temporary B-1 and B-2 visitor visas would no longer be issued to “aliens seeking to enter the United States for 'birth tourism,'” the White House said.
Trump, who for the 2020 elections, has made restricting legal and illegal immigration a focus of his campaign has criticised the right to citizenship for any person born in the United States, that also applies to tourists. But this change would require a change in the US Constitution.
Pregnant women will need to provide a specific reason for travel— like a medical necessity— beyond giving birth to travel to the US.
The US law does not bar foreign women from travelling to the US to give birth. They do however have to prove that they have the financial means to pay for a medical procedure if that is the reason for the trip.
The White House called the practice “a glaring immigration loophole,” it argued that the crackdown on “birth tourism” was for public safety and national security as well as to maintain the “integrity of our immigration system”. “The birth tourism industry threatens to overburden valuable hospital resources and is rife with criminal activity, as reflected in federal prosecutions,” it said.
With closing this loophole, the White House hopes that the US will be protected from national security risks and prevent hard-earned dollars of Americans being siphoned away to finance the direct and downstream costs associated with birth tourism.
