(Newsweek) – Authorities in the United States are taking new steps to address birth tourism, with state legal action and a federal enforcement initiative targeting alleged facilitation networks.
Birth tourism is generally defined as travel to another country for the purpose of giving birth so that the child obtains citizenship by place of birth. The Migration Policy Institute said that up to 26,000 births in the United States each year could be linked to the practice, a small share of the estimated 3.5 million births annually.
Reuters reported last month that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had directed investigators to focus on a new “Birth Tourism Initiative” led by its Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) division, targeting networks suspected of helping pregnant foreign nationals misrepresent the purpose of travel on visa applications in order to give birth in the U.S.
