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Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, on another matter, I am introducing a bill called the Barring American Citizenship by Keeping Out Foreign Fraudsters or the BACK OFF Act. This bill is designed to address a problem that has been festering in our country for some time, and that is the crime of birth tourism.

In the United States, we grant citizenship to virtually everyone born on U.S. soil except for children born to diplomats and a few other categories. And indeed, there is a case now pending in the U.S. Supreme Court to determine what the breadth and depth of what that birthright citizenship should look like under the Constitution.

But America is one of the few countries to allow individuals to obtain citizenship at birth regardless of parentage or immigration status, and our generosity was never meant to be exploited by our adversaries.

You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to believe that some of these individuals may even use this cover of citizenship in order to engage in espionage against the United States, indeed, especially the People's Republic of China.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, more than 30,000 births in the United States each year are to women on tourist visas, while many more are born to women who are here illegally or people who simply overstay their temporary visa.

Worse, entire cottage industries have sprung up over the past several decades designed to actually help facilitate foreign nationals to visit the United States on a temporary basis solely to obtain the coveted privilege of U.S. citizenship for their children.

In 2020, a report from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee found that several companies--these are businesses-- several companies existed to assist individuals trying to exploit America's generosity in this regard. One such company, Ada International, worked largely with Chinese individuals while another was known as Miami Mama, which specialized in helping Russian nationals secure U.S. citizenship for their children.

When we start to see foreign nationals securing U.S. citizenship for their children but with no intention of staying here or actually assimilating into our society and pledging allegiance to our Constitution and laws, it becomes clear that something is terribly wrong.

Citizenship in this country, the greatest country in the world, is a great privilege. And the practice of birth tourism undermines what it means to be an American.

This is why I am introducing the BACK OFF Act which will make aliens involved in birth tourism inadmissible and deportable from the United States.

This bill would also require the Department of Homeland Security to detain aliens who commit crimes related to birth tourism. It would require anyone engaged in this practice who entered the United States from Mexico or Canada to return to those countries for legal proceedings while they are pending, which would prevent them from actually giving birth here in the United States while they await the decision of their case.

And it would also prevent people from using the Biden-era Visa Waiver Program to give birth in U.S. territories. This legislation would create new criminal penalties and enforcement actions against those running birth tourism rings, including new criminal penalties under the Immigration and Nationality Act for those who facilitate this practice.

Finally, it would create a task force to investigate and refer cases to the Department of Justice for prosecution involving individuals and organizations that are involved in birth tourism schemes.

There is no greater privilege in the world than to be a citizen of this great country, and we must treat U.S. citizenship as such. But the practice of birth tourism trivializes this great privilege, and I hope the Senate will adopt my legislation to crack down on this atrocity.

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