In the wake of Tuesday’s Supreme Court decision upholding birthright citizenship, deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller rolled out MAGA’s newest talking point, suggesting the United States may need to ban pregnant foreign women from entering the country to combat what he pejoratively called 'birth tourism.'
Miller's remarks on Fox News
Speaking with Fox News host Jesse Watters, Miller maligned the high court’s decision while arguing that birthright citizenship incentivizes undocumented immigration. 'But if you have birthright citizenship, it means if a person comes here nine months pregnant to go look around at some things, in a couple of weeks, that is the mother of a lifetime American citizen and a direct line into American cash and welfare for the rest of that child’s life,' Miller said.
Watters asked if Miller was considering banning foreign pregnant women from entering the U.S., even temporarily. 'Well, what I’m saying, Jesse, is that you have to now think very carefully about who you let into your country, even on a temporary basis, because the possibility, as you said, for birth tourism, right, they do that. People come here just to have babies on American soil, and that baby gets to be a citizen for life,' Miller responded.
Welfare checks and 'third world' families
Miller added that he believes babies born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants would be able to send welfare checks back home to 'support a whole family in the third world.' He continued, 'So, yes, you can’t have the kinds of immigration programs other countries have when you can just have a baby here, and now that child is an American citizen. So, there’s a lot of things we’re gonna have to take a hard look at, Jesse.'
Congressional action: 'Anchors Away Act'
Miller isn’t the only MAGA figure floating the idea of banning foreign-born pregnant women from entering the U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) on Tuesday introduced a bill he called the 'Anchors Away Act' aimed at limiting or outright banning certain foreign-born pregnant women from entering the U.S. 'Under my bill, under my legislation, we fix that and go back to what our founders intended. So in short, what this bill does is if you are a pregnant woman, you can’t come into this country. You got to be a citizen, be here, you have to be a green card holder. So if you’re pregnant and you don’t have one of those statuses, no admittance allowed,' Ogles said in a video posted to social media on Tuesday.
President Donald Trump also called on Congress to pass legislation to end birthright citizenship.
Context and statistics
In 2020, the Center for Immigration Studies, an organization that advocates low immigration, estimated the possible number of birth tourism cases at 20,000 to 26,000 per year, less than 1% of the 3.61 million births in the U.S. that year.
