Tallahassee Democrat

Senator Rick Scott

August 9, 2026

Right now, America’s foreign adversaries see a loophole in our immigration system to exploit birthright citizenship. It’s called birth tourism.

As it stands, a citizen of a foreign adversary, like China, Russia, or Iran, can pay a surrogate mother to have their child in America, have birthright citizenship, and then take them back to a country and raise an American citizen to hate America.

This practice results in horrific abuse of infants and children; it also puts our national security at risk from adversarial nations that want to harm us.

In June, the Supreme Court ruled against President Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship, guaranteeing citizenship to the children of illegal aliens and birth tourists.

Last week, President Trump signed two executive orders to fight back against this terrible ruling. One order clarifies and narrows who can claim automatic citizenship.

The other cracks down on birth tourism by denying visas to foreigners who come here for the sole purpose of giving birth.

I applaud President Trump for acting. He did his part; now Congress needs to do ours. We need to codify laws outlawing birth tourism.

The ruling also allows the birth tourism business to continue to operate and works as a loophole for foreign adversaries to gain a foothold in America through surrogacy contracts.

Last year I introduced the Stopping Adversarial Foreign Exploitation of Kids in Domestic Surrogacy (SAFE KIDS) Act to prevent adversarial nations, including Communist China, from using American surrogates to obtain U.S. citizenship for their children and traffic infants abroad.

The bill is the first of its kind to curb this practice and hold third parties accountable for facilitating commercial surrogacy contracts with foreign adversaries. Birth tourism has hurt families in Florida. There was a recent report in St. Augustine, Florida, where a surrogate mother birthed triplets for a man in China. The woman gave birth to the children in November 2024, and nearly two years later, they still haven’t been picked up.

The mother is fighting back for custody. The Chinese father won’t show, but he’s fighting them in court. This is the reality of birth tourism; the kids are caught in the middle.

What’s most insane about this case is that prospective parents don’t even need to set foot on American soil to exploit birthright citizenship. That’s unacceptable.

Last year, 21 children were rescued from a home that was perpetrating a massive surrogacy scam in Arcadia, California – in which several surrogate mothers were scammed into birthing children for a couple from China.

The children in this case were neglected, abused, left without parents, and taken into state custody. That’s what happens when people treat children like commodities: the kids suffer most.

Last week, I went to the Senate floor to try to pass my SAFE KIDS Act and close the surrogacy loophole that foreign adversaries are using against us. Democrats blocked the measure.

Despite opposition, the SAFE KIDS Act is gaining major traction, with 13 Senate co-sponsors supporting the effort.

Protecting children from exploitation and preventing foreign adversaries from abusing our laws should not be a partisan issue. Every senator should support it.

We cannot allow countries like Communist China or Iran to use surrogacy to have an American child, raise them on anti-American ideas in their country, and then send them back here with the full privileges of citizenship – including voting.

This loophole should not exist. American citizenship is worth defending. It should mean something.