WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 24th January, 2020) The US government on Friday will begin denying so-called birth tourism visas to pregnant women as questions loom over whether the new rule will face court challenges.
On Thursday, the US State Department announced that the government will start denying visas in the "B" nonimmigrant category to pregnant women who intend to travel to the United States to give birth so that their children will automatically become citizens.
The White House in a statement later in the day confirmed that the United States will begin denying the visas on Friday.
The State Department, in a separate post in the Federal Register, said the new rule addresses the risk of birth tourism including associated criminal activity as reflected in federal prosecutions of individuals and entities involved in that industry.
The State Department also said that brokers charge tens of thousands of Dollars to arrange transportation and hospital stays for pregnant women who wish to give birth in the United States.
The Trump administration believes closing the "glaring immigration loophole" will protect the United States from national security risks.
In addition, the new rule is meant to prevent US taxpayer dollars from being siphoned away to finance the direct and downstream costs associated with birth tourism, according to the White House.
Officers from the State Department told a media briefing that the question of birth tourism would only be raised by consular officers if "they have specific articulable reasons to believe that an applicant is pregnant and planning to give birth in the United States."
At that point, the officer would have to determine what the Primary purpose of travel to the United States was and whether to give birth to obtain US citizenship for the child or for any other reason, the official said.
Interviews, the official added, would be conducted by highly-trained professionals ready to deal with a number of topics.
The official warned that applicants "must demonstrate preferable permissible purpose of travel."
Shortly after the US government announced the new policy, legal rights groups slammed the administration's move.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) issued a statement saying that consular officers should not be "policing pregnancy" or deciding who "looks pregnant."
"Misogyny has no place in our immigration policy," the ACLU said via Twitter.
Legal experts, however, appear divided on whether the new rule infringes on rights enshrined in the US constitution.
Immigration lawyer from Washington Elizabeth Kriukova told Sputnik that the rule is likely to be challenged in court.
"The law has no fundamental ban to enter the United States for receiving medical services, including pregnancy and delivery," Kriukova said. "That is why the presidential order may be appealed - just how it happened with many other of his orders."
However, another immigration attorney, Olga Aksenenko from Los Angeles, said Trump's new rule may not necessarily violate any constitutional provisions.
"It is possible that this order will not contain limitations of rights guaranteed by the US Constitution," she said.
A US government official during a briefing said embassies and consulates have documented trends showing an increasing number of B1 visa applicants whose stated primary purpose of travel is to give birth in the United States.
Questions loom, however, as to the overall significance of this policy purportedly designed to curb this trend.
Kriukova said that hospitals will be among the most interested parties in these appeals as they receive full payments from such patients instead of profits deducted by insurance companies and state subsidies.
The lawyer also did not rule out that agencies working on birth tourism will have to "go underground" under the new regulation.
Aksenenko expressed skepticism about the overall impact. She noted that the number of babies delivered by foreign tourists in the United States does not exceed one percent of the total.
She even doubted that a full ban on "birth tourism" will seriously affect US infrastructure, including hospitals and hotels.
"In the long term, it will have an impact on demographic and immigration situations, as the new regulations cancel chain migration based on getting US citizenship by child," Aksenenko concluded.
