WASHINGTON — The Home Oversight Committee is launching a probe into 4 firms cashing in on obvious “beginning tourism” to the US, by which expectant moms — many from China and Russia — could also be committing visa fraud to acquire American citizenship for his or her infants.
Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) and Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) fired off letters to the maternity companies in Florida, Texas and California on Thursday, asking for information about their advertising supplies and “the variety of shoppers serviced and quantity of charges collected for childbirth packages.”
“The advantages of US citizenship are a novel privilege,” wrote Comer and Gill, who chairs the Process Pressure on Defending Constitutional Rights and Exposing Institutional Abuses.
“Nonetheless, as international expectant moms touring for this function come predominantly from China and Russia, there are issues that the beginning tourism trade is giving rise to potential nationwide safety and election integrity threats posed by adversarial nations that problem US pursuits,” they mentioned.
“Whereas it isn’t inherently unlawful for a international traveler to present beginning in america, willfully misrepresenting one’s intentions to enter the nation on a brief customer visa is a violation of present regulation and regarded visa fraud,” they added.
The GOP lawmakers mentioned that web sites for every of the businesses — Have My Child in Miami, the El Paso, Texas-based Worldwide Maternity Companies and Doctores Para Ti, in addition to Dr. Athiya Javid’s OB/GYN clinic in San Diego, Calif. — point out every “is engaged in beginning tourism.”
All are advertising their companies “explicitly” to international moms, the Republicans famous, and offering further “authorized consultations” and assist reminiscent of short-term housing and step-by-step directions for making journeys to present beginning within the US.
Doctores Para Ti even immediately boasted of partaking within the follow in social media posts that acknowledged: “#BirthTourism.”
The letter calls for a response with paperwork and communications by Might 28.
Tens of hundreds of infants are born annually to girls within the US on vacationer visas. In 2020, as many as 26,000 international moms gave beginning, in keeping with an evaluation from the conservative Middle for Immigration Research. That determine rose to roughly 70,000 by 2023, that very same group discovered.
A Submit investigation beforehand discovered 1,000 firms working out of only one US territory within the Northern Mariana Islands, the place “beginning vacationers” from China have surged since former President Barack Obama’s administration supplied a visa-waiver program in 2009.
Have My Child in Miami, one of many 4 maternity companies being probed by Home GOP investigators, claimed on its web site to having performed 2,000 births for worldwide moms.
Usually, the moms from overseas enter the US on B-2 vacationer visas or B-1 enterprise visas.
The US State Division, nevertheless, bars consular officers from offering the visas to non-resident aliens who’re believed to be touring into the nation “for this major function.”
“The Division considers beginning tourism an inappropriate foundation for the issuance of short-term customer visas for the coverage causes mentioned herein,” a federal rule printed in 2020 acknowledged.
President Trump signed an government order in January 2025 additionally outlawing birthright citizenship, which led to rapid authorized challenges, leading to a federal decide pausing it from taking impact and a subsequent attraction to the Supreme Courtroom.
Final month, the excessive courtroom heard oral arguments in a kind of instances, throughout which most justices appeared skeptical of the Trump administration’s stance in opposition to birthright citizenship.
Trump’s Solicitor Normal John D. Sauer argued in April that non-US residents aren’t topic to the jurisdiction of the US and so their youngsters, even when born contained in the nation, can’t be assured citizenship.
The 14th Modification states that “all individuals born or naturalized in america, and topic to the jurisdiction thereof, are residents of america and of the State whereby they reside.”
Previous Supreme Courtroom selections have upheld computerized citizenship for the kids of international nationals born within the US, together with the 1898 case US v. Wong Kim Ark, by which the excessive courtroom held {that a} little one born to Chinese language immigrants was a US citizen.
The Submit reached out to the 4 firms the Oversight Committee queried for remark.
