Fact-check: Trump misleads about birthright citizenship, birth tourism before SCOTUS hearing

One of the most important Supreme Court rulings expected this year is whether to uphold the constitutional protection that babies born in the U.S. are citizens.

Trump issued an executive order on his first day of this term seeking to end birthright citizenship. Lower courts have ruled that his order was unconstitutional and now the Supreme Court will rule by July 4.

Days before the April 1 oral arguments, Trump railed against birthright citizenship with talking points that the longstanding practice of granting automatic citizenship to U.S.-born babies is abused by wealthy foreigners, was meant for the children of enslaved people, and that the U.S. is an outlier.

Time for a fact-check.

Some foreigners do give birth in the U.S. because they want their babies to obtain U.S. citizenship, but this amounts to a small portion of births annually, and there are policies in place to prevent that. The 14th Amendment passed after the end of slavery, a key legal provision that confers birthright citizenship. But courts have held since that the amendment applies to the children of immigrants, not just the children of enslaved people. And the U.S. is not alone in conferring birthright citizenship. 

Trump’s order ending birthright citizenship, if implemented, would affect about 255,000 babies born each year over decades, according to a friend of the court brief filed by 141 professors opposed to Trump’s order. Taking away access to citizenship will harm their ability to go to college and contribute to the economy, the brief said.

Birth tourism is a small slice of U.S. births

Trump has attacked "birth tourism" in recent days.

"Birthright Citizenship is not about rich people from China, and the rest of the World, who want their children, and hundreds of thousands more, FOR PAY, to ridiculously become citizens of the United States of America," he posted March 30 on Truth Social.

It’s unclear how many women come to the U.S. to give birth so that their children obtain citizenship; no U.S. agency tracks it. We can draw limited conclusions from federal data. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated there were 9,500 births to parents who reported a non-U.S. address as their residence in 2024. That number is likely an undercount because people may not self-report.

The Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors low immigration levels, estimates 70,000 births to temporary visitors in 2023, which is less than 2% of the 3.5 million births reported that year. That number is for people with long-term temporary visas such as students and guest workers, not people on tourist visas. The Niskanen Center, a think tank, has said CIS’ estimate is an overcount.

U.S. tourist visas cannot be granted "for the primary purpose of obtaining U.S. citizenship for a child by giving birth in the United States," according to U.S. law. The State Department under Trump has emphasized this rule. Immigration officials can stop pregnant women from entering the country with a tourist visa if the officer thinks she might give birth while visiting the U.S.

It’s a crime to lie to immigration authorities. 

Federal prosecutors under Trump and former President Joe Biden have charged people in California and New York for visa and immigration fraud crimes relating to birth tourism.

"If birth tourism is a problem, the answer is to enforce that regulation," Amanda Frost, a University of Virginia immigration law professor, told PolitiFact.

Trump’s Day 1 order on birthright citizenship challenged in court

In the March 30 Truth Social post, Trump said birthright citizenship is "about the BABIES OF SLAVES! … Look at the dates of this long ago legislation - THE EXACT END OF THE CIVIL WAR!"

The notion of birthright citizenship can be traced to 1608 with Calvin’s Case, a British decision that became part of the common law adopted in the U.S. legal system’s early days. Calvin’s Case granted subjectship — a British concept that has since evolved into citizenship — to all children born in Scotland except those of diplomats and enemy troops in hostile occupation.

The constitutional framework that Trump referenced dates back to the post-Civil War era. 

The 14th Amendment says that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."

This amendment, ratified in 1868, "was unquestionably intended to cover the children of unauthorized migrants, namely the children of enslaved persons brought here by criminals after the prohibition of the slave trade," said Gabriel (Jack) Chin, a University of California, Davis, law professor. (A 1952 statute echoed the 14th Amendment’s language.)

Courts have ruled that birthright citizenship does not only apply to the children of enslaved people. The children of immigrants are also eligible.

In 1898 the Supreme Court ruled in the Wong Kim Ark case named after a laborer who was born in 1873 in San Francisco. His parents were Chinese and lived legally in the United States. 

Around age 17, Wong left to visit China and returned to the United States without incident. Then, around age 21, he left again to visit China, but at the end of that trip, he was denied reentry to the United States because the collector of customs argued he was not a U.S. citizen. 

This happened during the era of anti-Asian strictures known as the Chinese Exclusion Act.

In its 6-2 majority decision, the Supreme Court’s justices ruled that Wong — and others born on U.S. soil, with a few clear exceptions — qualified for citizenship under the 14th Amendment.

U.S. not an outlier on birthright citizenship

Trump falsely paints the U.S. as a global outlier for offering birthright citizenship. "We are the only Country in the World that dignifies this subject with even discussion," Trump wrote March 30.

About three dozen countries have unrestricted birthright citizenship, also known as "jus soli," or "right of the soil." The U.S. is joined by neighbors Canada and Mexico, along with nearly every country in Central and South America.

The U.S. and Canada are considered the only two "developed" countries, as defined by the International Monetary Fund. Countries that offer birthright citizenship are almost exclusively in the Western Hemisphere. No country in Europe or East Asia, for example, has a similar policy.

Some countries offer a version of birthright citizenship. In Germany and the United Kingdom, for example, citizenship is automatically granted to people born within the nations’ borders, provided at least one parent is a citizen or permanent resident.

READ MORE: Our fact-checks about immigration