Trump to sign orders on birthright citizenship, Axios reports

WASHINGTON - US President Donald Trump plans to sign two executive orders on Aug 6 aimed at denying citizenship to children born in the United States because of commercial “birth tourism”, Axios reported.

Trump is also seeking to deny birthright citizenship for children born of some foreign diplomatic staff in the US and, potentially, US territories in the future, according to Axios.

Trump’s itinerary shows he has a “signing time” event at the Oval Office on Aug 6, which had not begun as of 4.05pm (4.05am on Aug 7 in Singapore), about an hour and five minutes past the time slot in the official schedule released by the White House.

Limiting birthright citizenship has been one of the top priorities in the Republican president’s crackdown on immigration.

An earlier effort by Trump was rejected by the Supreme Court in June, prompting him to call upon Congress to act.

No US law outright bars birth tourism, but a federal regulation implemented in 2020 during Trump’s first term prohibits using temporary tourist and business visas for the primary purpose of obtaining US citizenship for a newborn. People who engage in birth tourism schemes could be prosecuted for fraud or other related crimes.

There are no official figures tallying the number of foreigners who come to the US for the explicit purpose of giving birth and obtaining citizenship for their children, or the cost to taxpayers.

The Centre for Immigration Studies, which supports lower levels of immigration, estimated in an analysis in 2020 that between 20,000-25,000 mothers came to the US for birth tourism in a year-long period between 2016-2017.

There were 3.6 million births in the US in 2025. REUTERS