Staff Reports
Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies told a House Oversight task force this week that birth tourism is bigger than many people think. He repeated CIS’s estimate that about 20,000–26,000 women come to the United States each year to give birth, and said that could add up to roughly 200,000–300,000 U.S.-born children of foreign tourists over the last decade. That claim landed squarely in a hearing led by Representative Brandon Gill and put the spotlight back on birthright citizenship and how the government plans to stop abuse.
What Camarota told Congress
Camarota presented his group’s numbers as a best estimate, based on older public data and a method he admits has limits. He told the committee CIS’s “best estimate … of the possible number of births to tourists is 20,000 to 26,000 a year” and that, “assuming the numbers we estimated in the past continued, some 200,000 to 300,000 children were born to birth tourists over the last decade.” He also noted Americans are mostly uncomfortable with automatic citizenship for babies born to foreign tourists, citing public polling. This is the specific development the hearing centered on: the size and effect of birth tourism, not a rearguard fight about past court rulings.
Legal and policy backdrop
That testimony comes after a string of big moves from Washington. The Supreme Court’s ruling last year kept the broad rule that children born here are citizens at birth. The White House has since issued an executive order aimed at stopping commercial birth-tourism schemes, and the Department of Justice told prosecutors to prioritize cases that involve fraud tied to birth tourism. In short: the legal floor — citizenship for those born here — stands. The question now is how to stop fraud and big-money facilitators from gaming the system.
Numbers fight: CDC vs. CIS
Don’t be fooled into thinking the debate is only about feelings. It’s also about data. CIS’s estimates are much higher than some government counts that rely on single fields in birth records. CDC-based counts have been in the low thousands in recent years, while CIS uses older Census and survey methods and adjustments that produce larger numbers. Camarota himself says his method is imperfect and depends on older data. That means lawmakers should demand better, faster data — not shrug and call the problem small because one metric looks tidy.
Common-sense steps conservatives should push
Here’s the practical view: the Court has spoken. Congress and the executive branch should focus on enforcement and on cutting off the profit machine that fuels birth tourism. Start by tightening visa screening for those with suspicious travel patterns, target businesses and brokers who market birth packages, and use existing visa-fraud and money-laundering laws aggressively. Demand transparency: if CIS has a method, show the code and data; if CDC has limits, fix the form so addresses can’t be fudged. If opponents want to sue, let them — but the government should stop pretending fraud is an imaginary problem. We can protect citizenship’s value without rewriting the Constitution. That’s law and common sense working together — and yes, it’s about time.
