A few weeks before the due date of their first child, Ally C. and her husband packed their bags and crossed the border.
Ms. C., who declined to provide her full name out of concern over harassment, was in search of opportunity. For her unborn son, that meant access to a passport that could potentially open doors to more educational and professional choices in his future. And for herself, leaving home to give birth abroad was about finding more attentive doctors and better medical standards.
This is why Ms. C., a U.S. citizen, traveled to Cancún, Mexico, to give birth to her son, Kal, in 2023.
Why We Wrote This
Since the 19th century, birthright citizenship has been the law of the land. But the U.S. is hardly unique. The legal principle still stands across most of the Americas.
Since the Supreme Court decided in December to take up Trump v. Barbara, a case that could reinterpret the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, the notion of “birthright citizenship” has been under a public microscope. Proponents of President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting such automatic citizenship say the 1868 amendment is a pull factor for noncitizens to give birth in the United States for the purpose of taking advantage of the rights and privileges that come with American citizenship.
But birthright citizenship is the norm in most countries in the Western Hemisphere. And for parents such as Ms. C., going abroad to give birth is about something more personal than political.
“The biggest blessing to dual nationality is the freedom it grants you,” says the young mother, who is Afro-Latina and says she and her husband have contemplated a future move to Mexico. Thanks to their citizenship-holding son, they could gain permanent residency there under Mexican law.
“It means you can do and be anything you want to be,” she says. “And so, my baby, having U.S. and Mexican citizenship at birth, just makes everything so much easier for him. Education, where to work – his options will multiply.”
“Birth tourism” sparks major outrage
“Birth tourism” is the term used to describe when someone travels to another country to secure citizenship there for a baby about to be born. The practice makes up a tiny fraction of the estimated 3.6 million annual births in the United States. In 2023, about 9% (320,000) of all U.S. births were to individuals either without authorization to be in the U.S. or with temporary legal status. Birth tourism accounted for an estimated 9,000 births.
Issued on the first day of President Trump’s second term, the executive order aimed at curtailing the birthright guarantee referred to citizenship as a “priceless and profound gift” that was never meant to universally extend to anyone born on U.S. soil. The order was immediately challenged in court. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Trump v. Barbara in April and is expected to announce its decision any day.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer represented the U.S. government and argued that birth tourism was a threat to the nation. “We’re in a new world now … where 8 billion people are one plane ride away from having a child who’s a U.S. citizen,” Mr. Sauer told the justices.
Chief Justice John Roberts responded that it might be a new world, but it’s “the same Constitution,” which observers say reflects the court’s preference to decide the case on constitutional principles – not present-day policy priorities. President Trump’s second term has focused on mass deportations, militarizing the U.S. southern border, aggressive immigration enforcement in American cities and towns, and restricting legal immigration into the country as well.
N. Olvera, a Mexican citizen, entered the United States in 2020, just a few weeks before her son Franco was born. She gave only her first initial to protect her identity because she could face consequences for having a child in the U.S. on a tourist visa – including losing her ability to return to the U.S.
Like many Mexicans, she has a branch of her family that grew up in el Norte – in the U.S. Many of them encouraged her to cross the border to give birth. As a post-partum physical therapist, she also had Mexican clients who traveled north to have their babies. But it was her and her husband’s own experience – being unable to accept job offers or graduate-school placements in the U.S. because of financial and citizenship restrictions – that sealed the deal for them.
“A Mexican passport is generally believed to close doors,” she says, sitting on an exercise ball in her office in Mexico City.
The birth center she decided to work with in California asked her why she wanted to come to the U.S. to have her baby, but she says no one explicitly asked about her citizenship status.
Ms. Olvera was told she was the first birth tourist the center had worked with, she says. But birth tourism has garnered lots of headlines in the U.S. over the years, from a bust at a “maternity hotel” in California serving mostly Chinese parents in 2015, to more recent reports of Russians traveling to Florida to give birth. At a Senate hearing in March, witnesses raised concerns about the national security implications of citizens from U.S. adversaries traveling to give birth on American soil.
Stories about birth tourists from Russia and China have “gained extra attention and seem to be driving the birthright argument for the Trump administration,” says Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. “Even though it’s a small sliver of the population, he’s obsessed with birth tourism, because he seems to think the U.S. is allowing itself to be gamed.”
Ms. Olvera paid her medical bills up front and has not returned to the U.S. since giving birth. Securing U.S. citizenship for her son is a long-term bet.
Her original plan was not to tell him about his dual citizenship until he showed interest in studying or working in the U.S. “I have this fear that Franco will rebel as a teenager and leave for the U.S.,” she says with a nervous laugh. But her relatives have already spoiled that plan. They lovingly refer to Franco as their gringuito, or “little gringo.”
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
Having more than one passport is “pragmatic”
Not everyone sees a Mexican passport as closing doors. When Ms. C. told friends and family that she planned to give birth in Mexico, where the law prioritizes family unification and can grant residency and a pathway to citizenship for parents, she says they were skeptical.
“‘Why would you leave America of all places, the most beautiful, amazing place ever?’” she recalls people telling her. “And I’d be like, ‘Have you seen me? A Black female in the United States?’” Black women in the U.S. face maternal mortality rates that are three times higher than those of white women.
Ms. C. documented her experience – and tallied the costs of housing, medical bills, flights, and checked bags – on her Instagram account. She says a lot of the content she posts online is “pointing out how much less people pay in other countries for the same things we have in the U.S.”
Around the world, 33 countries have unrestricted birthright citizenship for newborns, regardless of a parent’s legal status. In 2024, the most recent year Mexico’s statistics agency INEGI published data, just under 10,000 births in Mexico were registered to mothers who reside outside of the country. That was less than 1% of the total births registered in Mexico the same year (1.67 million).
Gaining citizenship in more than one country in today’s world “is pragmatic,” says Mr. Chishti, who is also a lawyer. “We can’t always have teary-eyed motivations for these things,” he says of what he describes as his own “heartwarming” U.S. citizenship ceremony back in the early 1990s.
“People feel increasingly comfortable in more than one place in the world,” he says. “That’s the change.”