Looking forward to hearing your thoughts this week! (Until Friday at noon).

Six people were charged in 2020 for Medicare fraud and for charging over 100 Turkish women $750,000 so they could travel to the US to give birth. In 2019, 19 people were charged in Southern California for doing the same with Chinese clients. According to an article on the California case, “one company charged couples as much as $100,000 for a package that included housing, nannies and shopping excursions to Gucci.”

What is your view of birth tourism? Make a case for why this is a fair path to citizenship-or why this people taking advantage of the American birthright system. Do you think cities should be empowered to arrest people engaging in birth tourism? Should citizens be empowered to create neighborhood watch programs to look out for those engaging in birth tourism? (Cities like San Marino are already doing this!) What might be some benefits or problems to citizens policing birth tourism?

In 2019, former President Trump argued that the US should “do away” with birthright citizenship, established by the 14th amendment to automatically grant citizenship to individuals born in the US. As described by Trump, ““We’re looking at that very seriously, birthright citizenship, where you have a baby on our land, you walk over the border, have a baby – congratulations, the baby is now a U.S. citizen. … It’s frankly ridiculous.” 

What are the pros and cons of dismantling this aspect of the 14th amendment? Should President Biden or future presidents consider doing away with birthright citizenship?