President Donald Trump signed a new executive order Thursday aimed at curbing so-called “birth tourism,” seeking to prevent foreign nationals from traveling to the United States solely to give birth in order to secure American citizenship for their children. The move comes weeks after the Supreme Court rejected the administration’s effort to restrict birthright citizenship under the Constitution.

Speaking during the Oval Office signing ceremony, Trump said the new order is designed to stop wealthy foreigners from exploiting America’s immigration system.

“People are building businesses around it. Wealthy people are building businesses around birthright citizenship. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. It’s a disgrace. They’re buying their way in, and we’re not going to let it happen,” Trump noted.

Trump argued that the practice has turned birthright citizenship into a commercial enterprise.

“They’ve taken birthright citizenship and they’ve made a joke out of it,” he said during the signing ceremony in the Oval Office.

Under the executive order, children born to women who entered the United States solely to give birth would no longer qualify for citizenship under the policy targeted by the administration.

Stephen Miller, Trump’s top immigration adviser, called the practice an abuse of the nation’s immigration laws.

“Birth tourism is by definition a fraud on the American system, on the American taxpayer,” Miller said at the ceremony.

He explained that the administration is targeting individuals who obtain tourist visas under false pretenses.

He said the order targets those “pretending to be a tourist, pretending to be a visitor, saying they want to go to Disneyland or they want to go visit a monument or go to a national park, but the real reason they’re here is to have a child.”

Miller has led development of the order, along with another executive action denying automatic citizenship to children born in the United States to foreign diplomatic personnel serving other governments and to parents classified as alien enemies.

The order also calls for ending birthright citizenship in U.S. territories, including Puerto Rico, but only if Congress enacts legislation authorizing such a change. Although legislation has already been introduced, it currently faces uncertain prospects on Capitol Hill.

Questions remain about how the administration intends to enforce the policy, including how officials would distinguish between pregnant women entering the country as legitimate tourists and those whose primary purpose is to give birth on American soil.

White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf argued that organized networks have turned birth tourism into a sophisticated business.

“criminal rings are setting up a system whereby tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of people can come to this country in an organized fashion and give birth here purely for the sake of obtaining birthright citizenship.”

Scharf said the administration plans to respond with multiple enforcement measures.

He added that the order will contain a number of “different actions intended to combat those sorts of organized practices. We look very heavily at denying visas to people that we have reason to believe are coming here for that purpose, visas both for prospective parents but also for the people organizing these rings.”

The executive order follows a June Supreme Court ruling that rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to narrow constitutional birthright citizenship, leaving intact longstanding protections under the 14th Amendment.

Trump has repeatedly argued that the constitutional provision was never intended to apply to modern birth tourism, insisting its original purpose was to guarantee citizenship to the children of formerly enslaved Americans after the Civil War.

“This was meant for the babies of slaves. It was right after one week or two weeks after the Civil War ended,” he said Thursday. “This wasn’t for wealthy multi-millionaires, billionaires coming in and bringing 15, 20, 30 children along with them. It’s become a big business, and we’re ending that business.”

The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”

{Matzav.com}