Federal investigations have revealed that Chinese nationals have systematically traveled to the U.S. solely for the purpose of giving birth, thereby securing automatic citizenship for their children under the 14th Amendment.
Major cases, such as the USA Happy Baby Inc. scheme in California, operated between 2012 and 2015, helping over 100 Chinese women give birth in the U.S. The practice expanded with commercial surrogacy networks, particularly in Southern California, and has intensified over the past decade.
A Heritage Foundation report in 2024 found that lax U.S. laws governing international surrogacy were allowing foreign nationals, including those from China, to pay American women to bear their children with little oversight.
About half of U.S. states openly encourage the industry, the report found then.
Now Peter Schweizer, of the Government Accountability Institute, projects that between 750,000 and 1.5 million U.S. citizens, children, are being nurtured and taught in China.
He testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution on Tuesday and appeared on “Washington Watch” Wednesday.
“These children are born here, and as soon as they are capable of flying, they are flown back to China, and that is where they will be raised,” he told lawmakers.
“We know that the Chinese Communist Party is actually encouraging members of their party and elites to do this. They've written about it,” Schweizer told show host Tony Perkins.
The Chinese government, he says, encourages these select women to give birth in the U.S. and empower their newborns with rights meant for Americans.
“That child will be granted citizenship. Then they are raised in China, and when they turn 18, they're going to be able to vote in our elections, donate to political campaigns, apply for government jobs. The people that are doing (this in China) are not political dissidents. They're not allowed to leave the country. These are military officers, intelligence officers, etc.,” Schweizer said.
The surrogacy is a dangerous problem, Schweizer said.
The woman, a U.S. citizen, could be paid as little as $50,000-$60,000 for use of her womb, he said.
“That child goes back to China, sometimes not even picked up by the parents, and they are raised in China. We don't have numbers for this, but there are a couple of really kind of frightening numbers that I can point to,” Schweizer said.
One involves Xu Bo, a reclusive Chinese billionaire, who fathered more than 100 children through surrogacy, according to a Wall Street Journal report via Live Action News.
An ex-girlfriend says that could be a conservative estimate and that the number of children fathered by Bo could be more than 300, the report said.
“This presents a national security problem, and I think also a humanitarian crisis in a very real way for these children,” Schweizer said.
Compounding the problem is the fact that the U.S. government doesn’t record the nationality of birth parents.
The Supreme Court is set to hear a case on birthright citizenship on April 1 in the case of Trump v. Barbara about President Donald Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship. The high court could overturn a Supreme Court precedent that goes back more than 125 years.
Senate Democrats argued that immigration authorities have the ability to stop a clearly pregnant woman from entering the U.S.
Clearly they do, but the law isn’t being enforced, Schweizer countered.
The birthright citizenship afterthought
Birthright citizenship was not addressed by the founding fathers, who considered it an understood concept. The English common law they understood included the principle of jus soli – right of soil – which held that birth within a nation’s territory confers citizenship.
The U.S. Constitution did not define citizenship when it was adopted in 1787.
It was not until 1868 that birthright citizenship was formally enshrined with the addition of the 14th Amendment. This came in response to the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision in 1857 which denied citizenship to the formerly enslaved and their children.
Schweizer says his estimates are based on numbers from the Chinese government. Some outside sources have the figures much higher, he said.
“The estimates from Chinese sources, I would think, could potentially be understating it. They wouldn't have a reason to exaggerate it, but part of the problem is we simply don't know,” he said.
