It turns out that the Constitution is a suicide pact, after all. You have probably heard the term “birth tourism” around the debate about birthright citizenship this week. The New York Times has an explainer out today on the subject,
The term refers to pregnant women who travel to the United States to give birth so that their baby can have American citizenship. It is most commonly associated with a cottage industry of “maternity hotels” that has emerged over the past two decades and caters to wealthy families from countries like China, Turkey and Russia.
The Times cites a study by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) on the size of the phenomenon,
In its most recent estimate in 2020, the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that supports restricting immigration, put the number at around 20,000 to 26,000 babies a year.
The Times assures us that the number is too small to care about. But hang on a minute, let’s do the math. Use 25,000 a year to simplify the figuring. Over ten years, that’s 250,000. Over 40 years, that 1 million. A voting block that size is large enough to sway the politics of just about any state in America. Just look at what roughly 50,000 imported voters has done to upend the politics of just a single midwestern state.
And the birth tourists don’t even have to live here. They can vote absentee for life from overseas. And they get to pick which state to vote “from.” And I can guarantee you, given the nations of origin, none of those absentee votes are coming back marked “Republican.”
The Times tells us the problem can be just outlawed, without tossing out the ancient, bedrock right of citizenship and lifetime welfare benefits for the children of illegal aliens.
The question is do you want to take a cudgel to fix that problem or a more surgical approach?
The Times knows more than anyone the impossibility of getting Congress to vote to prevent the creation of 25,000 new Democratic voters annually. Congress can’t even manage to fund critical parts of the national government, like the Coast Guard.
All it takes is one federal judge (out of the 700 on the bench) to rule in favor of the practice to undo permanently the best work of the other two branches.
But what do I know?
