The US Supreme Court struck down an executive order from President Donald Trump on Tuesday — derailing attempts to curtail birthright citizenship. The POTUS has been vocal in his criticism of the decision, and urged Congress to take up the matter with urgency. Top Trump advisors are also mulling a “ban” against pregnant foreign women from entering the United States.
White House advisor Stephen Miller hinted at the possibility during a Fox News interview on Wednesday — insisting that the administration would take “a hard look” at current policies. Ahead of the ruling, some experts had estimated that Trump’s directive could affect the legal status of as many as 250,000 babies born each year and could require the families of millions more to prove the citizenship status of their newborns.
Limiting birthright citizenship was one of the top priorities in the Republican president’s crackdown on immigration — so much so that he signed an executive order on the matter on his first day back in office last year. The Trump directive had instructed federal agencies to not recognise the citizenship of children born in the United States if neither parent is an American citizen or legal permanent resident.
Miller rails against ‘birth tourism’
“You have to now think very carefully about who you let into your country, even on a temporary basis, because of the possibility of birth tourism…they do that. People come here just to have babies on American soil, and that baby gets to be a citizen for life,” Miller claimed during a Fox News interview.
The White House Deputy Chief of Staff claimed that people visited the United States while they were nine months pregnant “to go look around at some things” and then became “the mother of a lifetime American citizen in a couple of weeks”.
When Trump imposed ‘birth tourism’ visa rules for pregnant women
The concept is not new for the Trump government — with the President first publishing new visa rules to restrict “birth tourism” in 2020. The policy was introduced during the first Trump administration, and applicants could be denied tourist visas if they were determined by consular officers to be coming to the US primarily to give birth.