Senator David Vitter: End Birth-Right Citizenship; Birth Tourism is “Crazy”, “Nuts”

06 Mar, 2015 by Cassy Fiano

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Allowing babies born in the United States to automatically be granted United States citizenship has also allowed birth tourism to flourish, in which pregnant women from other countries shack up in hotels until they give birth, so their children will be citizens — and then, typically, they leave. Now, one senator is trying to end that.

“We need to stop automatically granting citizenship to babies born in this country,” Vitter said in reaction to the raids. “I have yet to talk to anybody in the real world, which means outside of Washington, D.C., who doesn’t think this is crazy, who doesn’t think birth tourism is nuts and should be illegal.”

Tuesday, federal officials executed search warrants in at several Southern California locations believed to be connected to birth-tourism businesses.

Birth tourism is a lucrative industry whereby, in this case, pregnant Chinese women pay to come to the U.S. to have their child born on American soil, and thus as a U.S. citizens.

As U.S. citizens, the foreign nationals’ children are eligible for all the benefits afforded to Americans, including the ability to sponsor family members to legally immigrate to the U.S.

“I’ve heard no common sense justification for this,” Vitter noted.

The Louisiana lawmaker has been pushing legislation to end birthright citizenship since 2011 with the “Birthright Citizenship Act.”

According to his office Vitter reintroduced the legislation this year. The bill would amend existing law — specifically the Immigration and Nationality Act — to prevent children born in the U.S. to foreign parents from being automatically citizens.

The exclusion would not apply to such an infant is one of the parents is a U.S. citizen or national, lawful permanent resident, or an immigrants actively serving in the U.S. military.

This legislation makes perfect sense, and would likely go a long way towards stopping birth tourism — and the immigration abuse it allows. Of course, because this legislation makes perfect sense, that means Democrats and their RINO allies will do everything they can to fight it tooth and nail.