How's it going, America,
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Let's get into it:
Trump signed an executive order ending birth tourism, that practice wherein expectant moms come to the US with the express purpose of obtaining citizenship for their newborns. Children are then whisked home to be raised in foreign countries or used as so-called anchor babies to create a string of migration for entire families, based on the one newborn citizen. There are many companies that trade on this practice, providing birth services for a price, all to facilitate the capture of citizenship. It's immoral, and it should be illegal.
"Birth tourism operators use deceptive advertisements and inducement to entice foreign nationals to travel to the United States for the purpose of giving birth on American soil," Trump's order reads. "They promise citizenship; access to public benefits; and short-term stays in specialized facilities, hotels, or rentals, but often fail to deliver on these promises. These operators coach their clients to misrepresent the purpose and duration of their travel to consular and border officials to obtain visas authorizing entry into the United States.
"Failure to appropriately combat these schemes has resulted in thriving industries around the world that profit by enabling the evasion of American immigration laws to obtain citizenship and other immigration benefits for foreign visitors, and the exploitation of the women who travel here for the purpose of giving birth."
Trump states, accurately, that this practice "undermines the integrity of the Nation's immigration system by enabling foreign nationals to exploit their temporary admission to obtain permanent immigration-related benefits." And that's exactly what happens. It's a loophole, a workaround of American immigration policy, it says that anyone in the world can decide that their child will be an American citizen, even if they have no permanent ties to the United States.
Our immigration system has been exploited for many years, but birth tourism is perhaps the most egregious. Visa overstays, temporary protected status that becomes permanent, leftist practices that prioritize compassion for any foreign schemer in the world over American citizens. If our citizenship is to have any value at all, it must be protected, not sold off.
He signed another order as well, reinforcing that citizenship shall not be granted to children of any parent who is an "alien enemy" of the United States, including those who are members of designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations or Specially Designated Foreign Terrorists, children of foreign government workers, including ambassadors, diplomats, or consulate employees. And he also specifies that children of those in the country who have engaged in commercial birth tourism are not eligible for citizenship. Also rejected for American citizenship are children born to US surrogates. It will be up to the Department of State to make sure this is enforced.
I applaud Trump for continuing this push to both deny citizenship to those engaged in birth tourism and to put an end to that practice. With Congress unwilling to act, in so many essential capacities, it's no wonder that the President has taken it upon himself to create protections for that unique and rare element of American life, jus soli citizenship, meaning that if you are born to this soil, you have possession of it.
We cannot have both open borders and a welfare state. All of us Americans will go broke trying to fund all the new people clamoring for cash aid in housing, food, and healthcare. These things that are not freely provided to Americans are somehow part of the handout package to new people arriving on these shores. These new restrictions are simply common sense.
Libby