Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) is introducing legislation to prevent birth tourism, saying Congress should act after President Donald Trump urged lawmakers to address birthright citizenship through legislation.
Speaking with Fox News host Will Cain, Ogles announced the proposed “Anchors Away Act,” which would prohibit pregnant foreign nationals from entering the United States for the purpose of giving birth and obtaining American citizenship for their children.
“We are literally going to be dropping Anchors Away,” Ogles said. “This idea that if you are pregnant and you are from a foreign nation, you know what, it is time for Congress to pass a law that says you cannot come here. You cannot have a baby on U.S. soil and exploit this loophole.”
The proposal comes days after the Supreme Court declined to allow President Trump’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship to take effect, allowing birthright citizenship to continue.
The Court’s 5-4 ruling concluded that the executive order conflicted with current interpretations of the 14th Amendment, which provides that all persons “born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” are citizens.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh argued that Congress could potentially change that law without requiring a constitutional amendment.
“In my view, the Executive Order does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment,” Kavanaugh wrote. “But the Order does contravene a federal statute, 8 U.S.C. § 1401(a). Congress could—consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment—amend §1401(a) or otherwise enact new legislation establishing exceptions to birthright citizenship for children born to foreign citizens unlawfully or temporarily in the country. But Congress has not yet done so.”
Following the ruling, Trump urged Congress to take legislative action.
“The Supreme Court upheld Birthright Citizenship, which is too bad for our Country, but we can easily make it up in Congress through Legislation,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “No long and unwieldy Constitutional Amendment is necessary! Congress should start TODAY to work on ending expensive and unfair to our Country, Birthright Citizenship.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) indicated Tuesday that House Republicans are already considering Ogles’ proposal.
“We’re looking at that,” Johnson told reporters. “We need to address the issue as quickly and as efficiently as we can.”
Johnson added that while some legal scholars argue ending birthright citizenship would require a constitutional amendment, lawmakers are exploring legislative options.
“Clearly, birthright citizenship has been abused,” he said.
Ogles’ legislation would focus on preventing pregnant foreign nationals from entering the country specifically to give birth. Questions are expected to raise questions about enforcement, verification, and the practical application of restricting entry based on pregnancy.
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100% in agreement. Until birth the babies do not have a birth certificate and nor entitled to citizenship. Therefore, to prevent them from abusing our Constitution, unless it is an emergency, each expecting mother should be barred from entering the USA and its posessions. This will end that dual citizenship loop hole.
As an example the Chinese have daily flights in Boeing 777 aircraft into San Francisco and Los Angles that are specially equipped as baby transports for the purpose ot having the babies dual (Chinese & US citizenship). They fly to the US in thier last month pf pregnancy, are housed and have their babie in the US, then fly back to China. What is the purpose of this act? The only reason I can think of is to take advantage of the lax and weak identification of grifters who want to exploit the US for their advantage, to be able to move a large undetected group of people back to the US for other than honorable reasons, or be be able to send them back for educational purposes at much reduced prices.
In addition other nations all the way down to the individual mother actually prepare and plan birthing on US soil to create an anchor baby to allow them to stay in the US when they could not qualify to stay on US soil as an immigrant in any other way.
Personally I think it’s a brilliant way to identify the person trying to exploit our Constitution and stopping this abuse.
SOMEWHAT Harsh, but an easy solution to the Anchor Baby problem is to inform the pregnant mother of Three OPTIONS:
If she is found to be “NEAR-TERM-PREGNANT” when she enters the U.S., she is informed that she has TWO OPTIONS:
1) Choose to turn around NOW and not enter the U.S. until she has given birth on international soil.
2) Enter, and IF the baby is born here, deport her for BREAKING THE LAW by coming here, and deport her WITH or WITHOUT the baby, being disqualified to return because she broke our law for illegally coming here to have a baby.
3) If she won’t take the baby, PERMANENTLY CONFISCATE the baby, DEPORT HER, then put the baby into the adoption system.
I think you have to go further and add that if a foreign born woman becomes pregnant in the US she must be deported.