The U.S. visa denial for birth tourism has taken center stage as the United States Mission in Nigeria announced it will refuse visa applications from Nigerians whose primary purpose of travel is to give birth in the U.S. to obtain citizenship for their child. In a tweet on its official X feed yesterday, the US Mission in Nigeria warned that the activity was not allowed in the US.
“We will deny your visa if we believe your primary purpose of travel is to give birth in the United States to get US citizenship for your child. ‘’This is not permitted. Using your visa to travel for the primary purpose of giving birth in the United States so that your child will have U.S. citizenship is not permitted.
The Mission stated in the post that “Consular officers will deny your visa application if they have reason to believe this is your intent”
By traveling to another country to give birth, a practice known as “birth tourism,” a pregnant woman can get citizenship for her unborn child under the nation’s birthright citizenship statute. Countries that provide ‘jus soli’ (right of soil) citizenship, in which a child born on the nation’s soil automatically acquires citizenship regardless of the nationality or residency status of the parents; find the practice especially alluring.
In the United States, where President Donald Trump signed an executive order at the beginning of his administration to terminate birthright citizenship for children whose parents are living in the country illegally, beginning in February 2025, the practice has recently come under criticism.
Since Trump took office in January, the executive order has been the focus of legal disputes. The Trump administration was prevented from putting an end to the practice on Friday by a fresh countrywide restriction ordered by a federal judge.
Following a landmark Supreme Court decision in June that limited lower court courts’ authority to issue countrywide injunctions, Friday’s finding was the third court decision to halt the birthright decree statewide.
In addition to threatening millions of dollars for health insurance coverage that depended on citizenship status, the states had claimed that Trump’s birthright citizenship decree was flagrantly illegal.
US citizenship “is the greatest privilege that exists in the world,” according to Judge Joseph Laplante, who delivered the latest decision. “Without legislation and the accompanying national debate, the swift adoption by executive order of a new government policy of highly questionable constitutionality that would deny citizenship to many thousands of individuals previously granted citizenship under an undeniably longstanding policy constitutes irreparable harm, and that all class representatives could suffer irreparable harm absent an injunction,” Laplante wrote.
