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Birth tourism in the U.S. remains notoriously difficult to measure, but Solicitor General John Sauer on Wednesday pointed the Supreme Court to what he called “striking” figures as the justices weighed President Donald Trump’s effort to curb birthright citizenship.
“Here’s a fact about it that I think is striking,” Sauer said. “Media reported as early as 2015 that, based on Chinese media reports, there are 500 — 500 — birth tourism companies in the People’s Republic of China whose business is to bring people here to give birth and return to that nation.”
Sauer’s response came after Chief Justice John Roberts asked him about the prevalence of birth tourism, which is the practice of traveling to the United States for the purpose of giving birth, so the child can automatically receive U.S. citizenship. Sauer acknowledged that “no one knows for sure” about firm data surrounding the industry, before citing media figures estimating more than 1 million cases, or even 1.5 million, from China alone.
Wednesday’s oral arguments centered on Trump’s 2025 executive order advancing a narrower interpretation of the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause so that children born in the United States to parents who are in the country illegally or temporarily would not automatically receive U.S. citizenship. The administration has argued the amendment’s birthright citizenship provision incentivizes and rewards illegal immigration.
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Conservatives have long raised concerns about birth tourism. Senate Republicans wrote in a 2022 report that it was a lucrative industry that “short circuits and demeans the U.S. naturalization process.” But the scale of birth tourism remains elusive, and proponents of birthright citizenship have downplayed it, contending it occurs infrequently.
The GOP senators noted in the report that they could not calculate birth tourism numbers because the U.S. government does not have a way to track them. Existing visa data cannot distinguish between birth tourism and other categories of traveling to the United States, such as medical travel, they said.
Sauer, however, rattled off a string of statistics in an attempt to illustrate the magnitude of the issue.
“There’s a March 9th letter from a number of members of Congress to [the Department of Homeland Security] saying, ‘Do we have any information about this?’ The media reports indicate estimates could be over a million, or 1.5 million, from the People’s Republic of China alone,” Sauer said. “The congressional report that we cite in our brief talks about certain hotspots, like Russian elites coming to Miami through these birth tourism companies.”
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Although the numbers remain unclear, prosecutors have secured convictions for birth tourism businesses. In 2024, Michael Liu and Phoebe Dong were found guilty by a jury of conspiracy and money laundering for running a birth tourism operation that helped pregnant Chinese women travel to the United States under false pretenses to give birth. Prosecutors said the couple coached clients to deceive immigration officials.
Sauer noted in his opening remarks to the Supreme Court that the United States’ nearly unconditional birthright citizenship policy has “spawned a sprawling industry of birth tourism, as uncounted thousands of foreigners from potentially hostile nations have flocked to give birth in the United States in recent decades, creating a whole generation of American citizens abroad with no meaningful ties to the United States.”
HOW THE SUPREME COURT’S INJUNCTION RULING ADVANCES TRUMP’S BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP FIGHT
At issue in the case before the Supreme Court is the language in the amendment that says anyone born in the United States and “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” is automatically a citizen. Trump said the provision was a relic of the Civil War.
“It had to do with the babies of slaves,” Trump said Tuesday as he announced that he planned to attend the oral arguments, making him the first sitting president to do so. “It didn’t have to do with the protection of multimillionaires and billionaires wanting to have their children get American citizenship. It is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Sauer argued that illegal immigrants and temporary visitors lacked the ability to establish a “domicile” in the United States, meaning they were subject to the jurisdiction of another country.
Roberts questioned the relevance of Sauer’s birth tourism claims, asking him to confirm that it had “no impact on the legal analysis before us.”
Modern-day implications of the amendment, including birth tourism, “could not possibly have been approved by the 19th century framers,” Sauer replied.
“We’re in a new world now, as Justice Alito pointed out, where 8 billion people are one plane ride away from having a child who’s a U.S. citizen,” Sauer added.
Roberts made his skepticism of Sauer’s argument apparent.
“Well, it’s a new world. It’s the same Constitution,” Roberts said.
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