Birth tourism was never a problem: How Trump admin got humiliated in US Supreme Court

Following the verdict by the Supreme Court upholding birthright citizenship, President Trump has publicly stated that he will ask Congress to legislate on the issue.This is not an entirely new idea. Republican lawmakers have already introduced the Birthright Citizenship Act of 2025, sponsored by Lindsey Graham in the Senate and Brian Babin in the House, which seeks to limit automatic citizenship to children with at least one U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident parent. The bill has not become law.The Trump administration has repeatedly cited birth tourism to justify its attempt to restrict birthright citizenship. In the light of Trump’s public statement immigration experts point out that when the issue came up during oral arguments before the US Supreme Court, the government's lawyer acknowledged there are no definitive figures on how widespread the practice actually is.Asked by a judge whether there was any information on "how common" or "how significant" birth tourism was, Solicitor General D. John Sauer replied: "No one knows for sure."Birth tourism refers to foreign nationals travelling to the US on visitor visas primarily to give birth so that their child acquires US citizenship under the 14th Amendment. The practice has long drawn criticism from immigration hawks and has been the subject of visa fraud investigations."There is no doubt that the practice of foreign women coming to the US for the purpose of giving birth to get US citizenship for their babies constitutes fraud and is a misuse of the immigration system," said Michelle Mittelstadt, director of communications and public affairs at the Migration Policy Institute in a post on social media. However, she argues that the scale of the problem should be viewed in context.According to US government data cited by Mittelstadt, fewer than 10,000 of the more than 3.5 million births recorded in the US in 2024 were to women who listed foreign addresses. While she acknowledges this could undercount birth tourism, she adds that even the broadest estimate by the Center for Immigration Studies, a conservative think-tank, places the number at about 26,000 births annually, or well under 1% of all births.Mittelstadt also contends that birth tourism can be tackled without altering the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship. She points to stricter screening of pregnant visa applicants, tougher investigations targeting intermediaries who organise birth-tourism packages, airline travel policies, and stronger penalties including future visa bansfor those found to have misrepresented the purpose of their travel.Rekha Sharma-Crawford, Kansas based, immigration attorney pointed out that while the Trump administration has said that birth tourism is all the rage, this was addressed at the oral argument. “Here, not only did the government not convince the Court it was a problem, but they also could not even say there was an actual problem,” she said.Catch the latest world news and top headlines. Download the TOI App.