Lawmakers grill birth tourism firm as founder invokes Fifth Amendment

U.S. lawmakers at a House Oversight hearing scrutinized the birth tourism industry, where foreign women travel to give birth in the United States to secure citizenship for their children. They focused on companies like Have My Baby in Miami, raising concerns about immigration fraud and potential national security risks linked to foreign clients. The testimony included the founder Wladimir Lorentz invoking the Fifth Amendment and being excused by the committee. Estimates about the scale of birth tourism vary, with some figures suggesting hundreds of thousands of births over the past decade and others indicating thousands per year, along with questions about who bears the cost to taxpayers. Legislators pressed to block Medicaid and other taxpayer funds from supporting birth-tourism operations and urged thorough investigations into the flow of government dollars. The proceedings framed birthright citizenship as something being exploited, while highlighting concerns about security threats from adversarial nations and the broader impact on American citizenship policies.