Trump again moves to end “birth tourism” – the right to US citizenship by birth

US President Donald Trump has made a second attempt to restrict the right to US citizenship by birth (the so-called “birthright citizenship”), signing two special executive orders on Thursday, August 6, just over a month after the Supreme Court found his first attempt to abolish the right unconstitutional.

One of the orders expands the list of exceptions to birthright citizenship to include new categories of foreign nationals whose children will not be able to obtain US citizenship, even if born on US territory.

The second order bans so-called “birth tourism”, the practice in which pregnant foreign women travel to the United States specifically to give birth, so that their child becomes a US citizen by place of birth. The US is one of the few countries where a person is granted citizenship by virtue of being born on its territory.

“This should have happened years ago, but we’re addressing it now,” Trump said as he signed the orders, which build on his campaign promises to restrict migration into the US.