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FIRST ON FOX: Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., has a plan to snuff out a multibillion-dollar global industry.
Scott is one of several Republicans racing to ram birthright citizenship tweaks through Congress after the Supreme Court’s bombshell ruling blocking the Trump administration’s effort to limit the right and President Donald Trump’s call for lawmakers to quickly respond.
Despite an increasingly crowded field of legislation, Scott argued in an interview with Fox News Digital that his approach to halt birth tourism could work, even with Democrats.
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“The whole concept of the 14th Amendment, that ‘under the jurisdiction thereof,’ if you are on vacation in America, you certainly should not have a child while you’re here and think in any way, shape or form that kid is going to somehow, some way be an American citizen,” Scott said.
“That’s just illogical. I would just say look at it from the mirror perspective,” he continued. “If you did that in any other country, would that child in that country become a citizen of that country? The answer is no.”
Scott’s legislation, which is still being drafted, would target tourism visas and any child born in the U.S. to a woman with said visa from becoming an American citizen.
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His legislation is “designed specifically to get to the president’s desk to sign into law,” a tacit acknowledgment that in the Senate, he will need Democratic support to put a dent into the issue.
“That means that Democrats cannot have any opposition to this notion that thousands of companies having hundreds of thousands of women come to this country to have a baby so that they leave with an American citizen,” Scott said.
“We should break that whole cycle, destroy it in its infancy by not allowing it to exist at all,” he continued. “And that to me is the best approach.”
Trump said he would prefer legislation over a “long and unwieldy” constitutional amendment, which has been floated by a handful of Senate Republicans, including Sens. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., and Rand Paul, R-Ky.
Tackling the 14th Amendment completely is something Scott said he’d do, but he acknowledged that it’s not “possible in the current political environment.”
“What is possible is for us to recognize that if you’re here temporarily, and you know you’re here temporarily, you should not leave with an American citizen as your child just because you gave birth on our soil,” Scott said.
Meanwhile, in the House, there’s another approach led by Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn.
Ogles, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, unveiled legislation Wednesday that would allow the government to bar pregnant foreigners from entering the United States.
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The Tennessee Republican says the measure, dubbed the Anchors Away Act, is necessary to crack down on the birth tourism industry, in which foreigners give birth on U.S. soil so that their children obtain U.S. citizenship.
However, the legislation faces steep obstacles to clearing Congress, and it is unclear whether the bill would get a floor vote in the House amid Republicans’ razor-thin majority.
“This is a conversation that I’m starting that I’m a champion of,” Ogles told Fox News Digital in an interview. “I’m working with the White House. And as long as it takes to get it done, I’ll be here to fight for it.”
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Ogles has also authored the Assimilation Act, legislation that would impose vast changes to the legal immigration system by ending birthright citizenship, requiring employers to implement E-Verify and scrapping the green-card lottery, among other provisions. The Tennessee lawmaker’s recently introduced Remigration Act would allow the government to denaturalize individuals convicted of certain crimes, including defrauding the government.
“What we’ve seen over the last several decades is that Congress, quite frankly, has delegated its right to legislate to the Supreme Court,” Ogles said. “So this actually creates the opportunity for Congress to do its job. To define what it is to be a naturalized citizen, to define who can and cannot come into this country, because as the legislative body, we are the ones that are supposed to make those decisions.”
