The US Em­bassy on Wednes­day warned that us­ing a visa to trav­el for the pri­ma­ry pur­pose of giv­ing birth in the Unit­ed States, so that the child will have U.S. cit­i­zen­ship, is not per­mit­ted, and Con­sular of­fi­cers will de­ny a visa ap­pli­ca­tion if they have rea­son to be­lieve this is in­tent of the trav­el to the coun­try.

In a state­ment on its Face­book page warn­ing against “birth tourism”, the Em­bassy al­so said if some­one al­ready has a visa and trav­els to the Unit­ed States for the pri­ma­ry pur­pose of giv­ing birth, and use Med­ic­aid or oth­er U.S Gov­ern­ment as­sis­tance to pay for their med­ical care, that per­son may not be el­i­gi­ble to re­new their visa in the fu­ture.

The US State De­part­ment has of­ten warned about the prac­tice of women trav­el­ing to the US with their vis­i­tor’s visa with the sole pur­pose of giv­ing birth in the US so that the child could be grant­ed cit­i­zen­ship sta­tus.

The US Gov­ern­ment has been clamp­ing down on the prac­tice and there have been re­port­ed cas­es of preg­nant women be­ing de­nied en­try in­to the US when ques­tioned about the pur­pose of the trip.

The cur­rent US Ad­min­is­tra­tion has been tak­ing a se­ri­ous po­si­tion against the prac­tice as it seeks to al­so stem il­le­gal im­mi­gra­tion.

WASH­ING­TON, Jun. 4, CMC