GOP Congressman Sounds the Alarm on Little-Known US Citizenship ‘Loophole’ Being Exploited by the Chinese
Wisconsin Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany is raising the alarm over a loophone that lets Chinese nationals take trips to the Northern Mariana Islands without a visa.
Tiffany sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem asking her to immediately shut down the loophole letting citizens from the adversarial nation visit the U.S. territory in the western Pacific Ocean, according to a copy of the letter shared with The Daily Caller last week.
The rule in question that allows the loophole was put into effect in January 2024 under former President Joe Biden.
First implemented by former President Barack Obama back in 2009, the rule allows “categorical parole” to Chinese nationals who want to enter the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.
The lawmaker told Noem that Chinese citizens “were able to sidestep the legal requirement that they first obtain a tourist visa before entering the CNMI.”
As a result, more Chinese nationals were able to partake in “birth tourism,” with births from foreigners rising from less than 10 in 2009 to almost 600 in 2018.
In fact, the practice of foreign nationals giving birth in Saipan, the capital city, became so widespread that “such births exceeded the number of births to legal U.S. residents there in recent years,” Tiffany warned.
There are fewer than 50,000 people living on the Northern Mariana Islands, meaning that such a trend would be rather noticeable to the locals.
The loophole created an entire birth tourism market through which some Chinese women fork over thousands of dollars for the chance to give birth on American territory.
That’s because the children can later attain green cards for their entire families as a result.
Then there are the security concerns with allowing Chinese nationals to enter the territory, which is home to U.S. Naval Base Marianas, without a visa.