US to Deny Tourist Visa if Planned only for Delivery on its Soil
NEW DELHI, Dc 11: The United States on Thursday clarified that tourist visa applications would be denied if officers believe the primary purpose of the travel is to give birth in the United States in a bid to obtain US citizenship for the child.
This is not permitted, the US embassy in India wrote on X on Thursday. The US President Donald Trump on January 20 had signed an order to end birthright citizenship which grants citizenship on everyone born on American soil.
Birthright citizenship was the first Trump immigration-related policy to reach the US Supreme Court for a final ruling. The US Supreme Court agreed on Friday to take up the constitutionality of Trump’s order on birthright citizenship declaring that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens.
If allowed to go ahead, Trump’s order would overturn more than 125 years of understanding of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
Ending birthright citizenship was among the first actions by Trump in his crackdown on illegal immigration, one of the main poll planks of the US President who returned to the White House for a second term in January this year.
Other actions include immigration enforcement surges in several cities and the first peacetime invocation of the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act. In a recent interview to Politico, Trump said the US “cannot afford to house tens of millions of people that came in through birthright citizenship. “When that happened, that was meant for the … the babies of slaves, and if you look at the exact dates that it was passed, it all had to do with the Civil War and the ending of the Civil War. It’s that little period of time, and people now are starting to understand that,” Trump said in the interview.
He, however, also said he has not thought about whether he will scrap the US citizenship from people who already have it if the Supreme Court sides him.
(Manas Dasgupta)
