President Donald J. Trump refuses to let a Supreme Court setback cheapen the future of American citizenship.

Joseph Ford Cotto | August 10, 2026

In Trump v. Barbara, the Supreme Court justices ruled that children born to parents here unlawfully, or only temporarily, still claim U.S. citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment, with a few longstanding exceptions. That decision landed on June 30.

Less than six weeks later, the president signed a pair of executive orders that take advantage of every centimeter of leeway the Court allows. He aims to shut down the lucrative, gangrenous industry of birth tourism for good.

On August 6, Trump signed two new executive orders to curtail anchor birthing. One order identifies categories of children whose parents fall inside the historical exceptions the Court itself acknowledged. These exceptions include alien enemies, foreign government employees, those who buy access to citizenship through commercial schemes, or births in certain territories. Trump directed agencies to withhold recognition of citizenship in those situations.

The second order specifically ends birth tourism. It defines the practice as foreign nationals entering on temporary visas for the express purpose of giving birth on U.S. soil, or helping others do the same. Trump empowered the secretaries of State and Homeland Security to deny visas, revoke existing ones, bar entry, and target the businesses who run birth tourism schemes.

These steps matter because birthright citizenship creates clear, measurable harms.

It turns illegal entry or short-term presence into a permanent claim on the nation’s resources. The anchor baby gains lifelong access to public schools, medical programs, food assistance, and, eventually, voting rights and the power to sponsor relatives. Native-born taxpayers who never consented to the parents’ presence foot the bill. Americans compete for the same classrooms, hospital beds, and starter jobs.

Studies have long shown that households headed by illegal immigrants generate large net costs once U.S.-born children are counted. Citizenship, sanely defined, is membership in a self-governing people, not a free ticket handed out by geography alone. Nations from Australia to Ireland to most of continental Europe have restricted pure soil-based citizenship. Why? Because they recognized corrosive incentives and understood the strain on public resources.

There is also the stark reality that birth-tourist immigrants, whether legal or illegal, treat America not as a sovereign state, but as a system to be gamed. Their children no doubt inherit this view. When these kids grow into adults and start voting, they are highly prone to nation-wrecking politics. That includes third-worldist causes which wave a black flag against Western civilization.

The original meaning of the Citizenship Clause supports Trump’s limits. The phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” was understood by its Framers to exclude those who owe primary allegiance elsewhere. That includes diplomats, invading forces, and, by logical extension, people present in open violation of the laws. Expanding it to every birth on American soil was based on a later decision, not an unchangeable command.

Trump’s new orders stay within the historical exceptions the Court recognized. He attacks the commercial industry that treats American citizenship as a product for sale. Birth-tourism operators advertise packages, coach clients to lie to consular officers, and profit while women are exploited and immigration laws are mocked.

Ending that racket restores integrity to the visa system and protects the value of citizenship for those who already hold it.

American Thinker