WASHINGTON – Today on the floor, U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) discussed his Barring American Citizenship by Keeping Out Foreign Fraudsters (BACK OFF) Act, legislation he introduced today that would put a stop to birth tourism, a long-abused system that America’s foreign adversaries like China and Russia have exploited to undermine our nation’s sovereignty and ensure their children are born on American soil to automatically gain U.S. citizenship. Excerpts of Sen. Cornyn’s remarks are below, and video can be found here.

“This bill is designed to address a problem that’s been festering in our country for some time, and that is the crime of birth tourism.”

“Entire cottage industries have sprung up over the past several decades designed to actually help facilitate foreign nationals to visit the United States on a temporary basis solely to obtain the coveted privilege of United States citizenship for their children.”

“Citizenship in this country, the greatest country in the world, is a great privilege, and the practice of birth tourism undermines what it means to be an American. This is why I’m introducing the BACK OFF Act, which will make aliens involved in birth tourism inadmissible and deportable from the United States.” 

“This legislation would create new criminal penalties and enforcement actions against those running birth tourism rings, including new criminal penalties under the Immigration and Nationality Act for those who facilitate this practice.”

“There is no greater privilege in the world than to be a citizen of this great country, and we must treat U.S. citizenship as such, but the practice of birth tourism trivializes this great privilege, and I hope the Senate will adopt my legislation to crack down on this atrocity.”

Background:

Specifically, the Barring American Citizenship by Keeping Out Foreign Fraudsters (BACK OFF) Act would put a stop to birth tourism by:

• Making aliens involved in birth tourism inadmissible to and deportable from the United States;
• Requiring the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to detain aliens who commit crimes related to birth tourism;
• Preventing aliens engaged in birth tourism from giving birth in the United States, where their children would otherwise obtain U.S. citizenship, by requiring:
  • Expedited removal of aliens who are engaged in birth tourism or commit crimes related to facilitating birth tourism;
  • Aliens who are engaged in birth tourism and cross into the United States from Canada or Mexico to return to those countries pending legal proceedings to prevent them from giving birth in the United States;
  • And aliens who are abusing a Biden-era visa waiver program to give birth in the U.S. territories to be returned to the foreign country from which they left to wait for a decision on their pending proceedings;
• Penalizing foreign countries that refuse to accept removal of their nationals who engage in birth tourism (recalcitrant countries) by automatically temporarily suspending visa issuance to nationals of those countries;
• Preventing aliens from circumventing new bars on birth tourism by:
  • Requiring biological females of childbearing age to submit to a medical examination by a United States Public Health Service medical officer if an immigration officer or immigration judge suspects the alien is subject to the birth tourism bars;
  • And authorizing the Secretary of State or consular officer to deny or delay issuance of a nonimmigrant visa if the alien is suspected being pregnant or engaging in birth tourism;
• And creating new criminal penalties and enforcement actions against people who run birth tourism rings, including:
  • New criminal penalties under the Immigration and Nationality Act and Title 18 of the U.S. Code for individuals who facilitate birth tourism and defraud the government through healthcare and other schemes to facilitate birth tourism;
  • And creating a task force that specifically investigates and refers cases to U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for prosecution for organizations or groups that create schemes to facilitate birth tourism and requiring the task force to report to appropriate committees on its actions within one year.