ST. CROIX — A Republican member of Congress from Virginia has introduced legislation aimed at ending automatic U.S. citizenship at birth for certain children born in four U.S. territories including the Virgin Islands starting January 1, 2027.
While the bill’s sponsor frames the measure as a targeted tool to curb foreign exploitation, Virgin Islands leaders, a legal advocate, and the president of the Sixth Constitutional Convention are arguing the proposal would create a two-tiered citizenship system rooted in what they describe as a legacy of colonial discrimination.
Representative Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) introduced H.R. 9724, the End Birthright Citizenship for Territories Act, stating its primary objective is to combat “birth tourism” — foreign nationals traveling to U.S. territories, so their children obtain U.S. citizenship.
Congress currently grants automatic birthright citizenship to four of the five inhabited U.S. territories: the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), with American Samoa as the sole exception.
The bill, introduced on July 16, would not affect the citizenship or nationality status of anyone born before January 1, 2027, and would preserve automatic U.S. citizenship at birth for children born in the territories to U.S. citizens or aliens lawfully admitted for permanent residence in the United States. Opponents counter that the legislation would nevertheless end the current statutory guarantee of automatic citizenship for children born after January 1, 2027, in the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the CNMI whose parents are neither U.S. citizens nor lawful permanent residents.
“The bill very specifically says that it does not apply to U.S. citizens currently, or to children of at least one U.S. citizen,” Griffith said in an interview. “So, any child born in the Virgin Islands of a U.S. citizen is going to be a U.S. citizen.”
Delegate to Congress Stacey Plaskett rejected Griffith’s characterization, arguing the legislation’s effect would extend far beyond its stated goal.
“While Congressman Griffith states H.R. 9724 would solely remove ‘birth tourism,’ in actuality, the bill would strip automatic U.S. citizenship from children born in Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands beginning in 2027,” Plaskett said in a statement. “Its sweeping language could leave children born in the U.S. territories citizens of nowhere.”
Neil Weare, co-director of Right to Democracy, raised a similar concern, arguing that the bill’s text does not match Griffith’s stated intent.
“While Rep. Griffith says his legislative intent is to focus on addressing so-called ‘birth tourism,’ the actual text of the legislative amendments does not contain any limiting language and could deny citizenship to anyone born in a territory moving forward,” Weare said in a statement.
The bill states that children born in the territories after January 1, 2027, would remain U.S. citizens if at least one parent is a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident. However, rather than placing those exceptions directly into the main immigration statute, the bill establishes a cutoff for automatic territorial citizenship and addresses the exceptions in a separate instruction to amend the law.
Plaskett and Weare argue that this drafting could create ambiguity because the exceptions are not written directly into the operative statutory language. They contend that, if interpreted literally, the bill could leave some children born in the territories without citizenship.
Birth tourism debate extends to visa waiver programs:
The debate over birth tourism in the territories extends beyond birthright citizenship statutes to federal visa waiver programs.
Earlier this year in March, Representatives Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) and Chip Roy (R-Texas) introduced the One Nation, One Visa Policy Act, seeking to ban “Communist Chinese nationals from entering the United States without a valid visa and to bar them from any visa-free travel program,” including the Guam-CNMI Visa Waiver Program. The act has also been introduced in the Senate by Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.) Both measures have been referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary.
This legislation followed a letter sent by Tiffany to former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem urging the shutdown of Biden- and Obama-era programs allowing visa-free travel to the CNMI. Under those programs, Chinese citizens have been able to bypass standard tourist visa requirements, allowing pregnant mothers to give birth on U.S. soil and secure U.S. citizenship for their children.
In 2009, then-President Barack Obama created a visa-waiver program that enabled Chinese nationals to visit the Northern Mariana Islands without a tourist visa for up to 45 days at a time.
Since then, there has been a rise in birth tourism to CNMI as foreign visitor births climbed to nearly 600 in 2018 from fewer than 10 in 2009, the Washington Times reported in December 2020.
In his July 16 e-newsletter, Griffith cited a New York Post article published earlier this year about birth tourism between China and the CNMI.
The Post article, published March 19, reported that China-watchers estimate about 1,000 companies offer birth tourism to the CNMI, other U.S. territories, and the U.S. mainland, claiming 1.5 million American babies are being raised in China by Chinese parents who have participated in birth tourism.
While Tiffany and Scott’s bill targets the front-end immigration loophole by requiring valid visas, Griffith’s measure targets the back-end result by altering the statutory definition of birthright citizenship in the territories.
Griffith acknowledged during an interview that he possesses no concrete evidence that birth tourism is occurring in the Virgin Islands specifically, focusing instead on issues in the Pacific where companies operate birth tourism packages.
“My main concern are folks who are trying to take advantage of American laws to get folks in here, get citizenship, and have no real desire to join in the American dream,” he said.
The constitutional debate over territorial citizenship:
The broader controversy highlights a fundamental clash over where Congress derives its power to define citizenship in the territories, especially after the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Trump v. Barbara. The case involved a challenge by the Trump administration to the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause and whether the government could limit automatic birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to certain noncitizen parents. The Supreme Court rejected the administration’s position, reaffirming that birthright citizenship protections apply in the states. Griffith argues, however, that the ruling did not address statutory citizenship provisions governing U.S. territories, leaving Congress authority to act.
Plaskett challenged Griffith’s legal reasoning, arguing the bill relies on the Insular Cases — a controversial body of Supreme Court decisions that territorial advocates have criticized as providing a basis for unequal treatment of residents of U.S. territories.
“The bill relies on the Insular Cases for its authority, a body of law built on openly racist reasoning which the DOJ previously renounced,” Plaskett stated. “This bill is divisive, it is racist in its foundation, and it is corrosive of the principles of American law.”
Plaskett pointed to her ongoing work to dismantle that legacy, including leading a bipartisan letter signed by 43 members of Congress urging the U.S. Department of Justice to formally repudiate the Insular Cases, as well as leading an amicus brief in Trump v. Barbara that was quoted by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Weare, an attorney who served as counsel of record in an amicus brief filed in Barbara on behalf of 21 current and former officials from U.S. territories, similarly condemned the bill’s reliance on colonial-era precedents.
“This dangerous and unconstitutional legislation highlights the problem with the Insular Cases and the idea that Congress has the power to simply turn constitutional rights on and off at will in U.S. territories," Weare stated.
Implications for the Sixth Constitutional Convention:
Griffith’s bill has also sent shockwaves through the local governance movement in the Virgin Islands.
Usie Richards, president of the Sixth Constitutional Convention, called the legislation “atrocious” and noted that it exposes the structural vulnerability of all U.S. territories.
“The only meal that is on the table today is the subject matter of the territories that have no opportunity to be covered by the rights of a constitution, since the territories ... are in fact governed solely by actions of Congress,” Richards said, calling on all U.S. territories to band together.
Addressing whether adopting a local constitution could shield Virgin Islanders from congressional actions like H.R. 9724, Richards said adopting a constitution would not prevent Congress from enacting laws affecting the territory.
“The adoption of a constitution by the people of the Virgin Islands, once approved by Congress, does not remove the authority and opportunity of Congress to remove citizenship,” Richards said, noting that Puerto Rico has had an adopted constitution for decades and is still included in Griffith’s bill. “I do not foresee ... that the mere fact that we adopt a constitution for the Virgin Islands, that we will not be impacted by congressional acts.”
Richards, who has long argued that the Virgin Islands should resolve its political status before adopting a constitution, said he still believes “status before constitution” is the preferable path. However, he said he continues serving on the Constitutional Convention because it is currently the only avenue for self-governance before the territory.
“I’ve always been an advocate, more from the late ’70s to the early ’80s, that it should be status before constitution,” Richards said. “But we do not have the subject matter of status before us as a public, as an electorate, as residents of the Virgin Islands. What has been placed before us by those with the authority to bring the question to the electorate is a subject matter of constitution.”
Despite these legal limitations, Richards emphasized that adopting a local constitution remains a vital step toward self-determination. Unlike the Revised Organic Act of 1954 — a document handed down by Congress — a local constitution represents a “people-oriented governance document” drafted and ratified directly by Virgin Islanders. Furthermore, Richards said Griffith’s bill sends a “clear signal” to delegates that any draft constitution submitted to Washington must be able to pass congressional review, whether the U.S. House of Representatives is controlled by Democrats or Republicans.
Critics cite history of territorial citizenship:
Former Senator Janelle Sarauw, a candidate for delegate to Congress, argued in a statement that the legislation would create unequal treatment for children born in the territories and reverse nearly a century of federal policy recognizing people born in the Virgin Islands as U.S. citizens at birth. She emphasized what she described as the real-world harm of creating separate standards for children born under the same flag.
“This legislation would create two classes of children born in the United States Virgin Islands,” she said in a statement. “One child would be born an American citizen because of the legal status of their parents, while another child, born in the same hospital, under the same American flag, could be denied that citizenship. That is not immigration reform. That is territorial discrimination.”
Sarauw, whose doctoral dissertation examines the political disenfranchisement of the Virgin Islands, noted that Virgin Islanders have been granted U.S. citizenship by birth since 1927. She also argued that the draft legislation incorrectly cites the statutory provisions governing territorial citizenship, conflating the separate laws that apply to Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands.
Richards similarly criticized the proposal’s departure from territorial history, noting that the United States purchased the Virgin Islands from Denmark in 1917, granted statutory citizenship to people born in the territory in 1927, and has since relied on generations of Virgin Islanders for military service and other contributions.
Sarauw argued the legislation would further marginalize U.S. territories.
“It is difficult to reconcile asking people from the territories to fight, bleed, and die for America while simultaneously debating whether the children born in those same territories deserve equal recognition under American law,” she stated. “Our children should not enter this world with fewer rights simply because they were born in a territory.”
Bill’s path forward remains uncertain:
Plaskett noted in her July 20 statement that the measure had not attracted a single cosponsor. However, Representative Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) subsequently signed on as the bill’s sole cosponsor as of July 21. The measure has been referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary and the Committee on Natural Resources.
Territorial representatives, constitutional delegates, and civil rights organizations have continued to voice opposition and monitor the legislation. Plaskett confirmed that her office is actively coordinating with Democratic and Republican colleagues across the territories, as well as members on the Judiciary and Natural Resources Committees, to monitor H.R. 9724 closely.
“The nearly four million Americans who call the U.S. territories home are entitled to the full dignity of their citizenship, and I will continue to defend it,” Plaskett stated.
