Trump and DeSantis want to change citizenship law: Anyone born in the United States should no longer automatically be a US citizen. But that is against the constitution. However, “birth tourism” is a reality.
When Donald Trump describes his country, it is usually in somber colors, especially when it comes to immigration.
Not only that allegedly millions of people are pouring into the USA illegally, not only that many of them are allegedly mentally ill and criminals.
Trump: birthplace principle abolish
No, what the former US President recently denounced in a video is that “hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world” are settling in hotels – in their last weeks of pregnancy – so that their child “illegally gets US citizenship”.
Trump promises his supporters that he will put an end to this “birth tourism” when he is president again. Children born in the US should no longer automatically become US citizens.
DeSantis is also demanding a change in the law
According to Trump’s plan, at least one parent must be legally and permanently resident in the country, otherwise the child cannot obtain citizenship.
Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who also wants to be president, takes the same line. He thinks it’s wrong for people to use the US for something like birth tourism. He will remove the incentives to enter the country illegally.
Like Donald Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis also wants to take action against birth tourism.
To give birth in the USA
birth tourism? Yes, there is, confirms Julia Gelatt of the Institute for Migration Policy, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington. There are people who come to the USA only to have children there and so that these children can then get citizenship. But Gelatt believes this is a very small phenomenon.
There are no concrete figures. About 3.7 million babies are born in the United States every year. A few tens of thousands could have mothers who were only in the US on a tourist visa, but certainly not hundreds of thousands, as Trump claims, says migration researcher Gelatt.
This is absurd for practical reasons alone: people need visas, they have to plan well in advance, and the bureaucracy is slow. It is difficult to time to come into the country precisely for a birth.
Investigations against organized “birth tourism”
However, there are always investigations into organized birth tourism, for example when pregnant women from China are brought to the USA on tourist visas for money.
But there is one thing that cannot be shaken – the 14th amendment to the constitution, which states: Whoever is born on US soil is an American. And not even a President Trump can override that by order.
probability from constitutional amendment “low to zero”
“If he says that, it’s just talk, there’s not an ounce of truth behind it,” says Todd Belt, professor of politics at Georgetown University in Washington. Any constitutional attorney could explain that.
You would have to change the constitution, and that would require broad political majorities: two-thirds in the House of Representatives, two-thirds in the Senate and three-fourths in the states. The probability of getting this majority together is “low to zero,” says Belt.
Donald Trump should know that. When he was president, he announced several times that he would abolish the right to citizenship based on the birthplace principle. But during his four years in the White House, he made no serious attempt to do so.