General Discussion

There is no official tally of babies born to tourists on American soil. In its most recent estimate in 2020, the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that supports restricting immigration, put the number at around 20,000 to 26,000 babies a year.

That is less than 1 percent of the number of babies born in the United States in 2020, according to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

More recently, Republican lawmakers have cited birth tourism in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory that has looser visa requirements and is closer to China. Official data, however, has shown that such births have dropped off significantly to 47 births registered to foreign tourists in 2025, from the peak of 581 in 2018.