A Chinese military officer and his wife traveled to the United States to have their third American-born child.
Not their first. Their third.
They’d been doing this for years. Flying from China, giving birth on American soil, securing birthright citizenship for each child, and returning home.
A military officer in the People’s Liberation Army — the armed forces of Communist China — has three American citizens as children.
This wasn’t a loophole. It was a policy. And Barack Obama built it.
The Directive That Opened the Floodgates
Peter Schweizer’s new book, “The Invisible Coup,” details how the Obama administration explicitly made Chinese birth tourism easier.
Obama ordered U.S. consular offices “not to deny visa applicants solely because they planned to travel to the United States to obtain citizenship for their child.”
Read that again. Even if a Chinese national walked into an American consulate and stated openly that the sole purpose of their trip was to give birth on American soil to obtain citizenship for their child — the consular officer was instructed not to deny the visa.
Before this directive, a consular officer could reasonably deny a visa to someone whose stated purpose was exploiting birthright citizenship. Obama removed that discretion.
The result: Chinese birth tourists no longer needed to lie. They could state their purpose openly. And the American government was ordered to wave them through.
Ten-Year Visas Made It Industrial
If the consular directive opened the door, the ten-year visa agreement blew it off the hinges.
In November 2014, Obama announced a reciprocal visa agreement with China. Chinese nationals received ten-year, multi-entry visas to the United States.
Before the agreement, Chinese visas were valid for one year and required annual renewal interviews. The annual interview was a natural checkpoint — an opportunity to assess whether the visa holder was using their access legitimately.
With ten-year multi-entry visas, Chinese nationals could travel back and forth between China and America indefinitely. No interviews. No checkpoints. No oversight.
As Australian professor Salvator Babones noted, young Chinese women granted these visas in the program’s first years could have “as much as 25 years of fertility ahead of them.”
Twenty-five years of unlimited access to American birthright citizenship. Per person. No questions asked.
“Higher Than Robbing a Bank”
The birth tourism industry that exploded under Obama’s policies operates as a sophisticated commercial enterprise.
Chinese companies market American birth tourism with the enthusiasm of luxury travel agencies. Websites offer housing options, meal plans, shopping sprees, award-winning chefs, and medical consultations.
One luxury operation in Irvine, California — China Mifubaby Group — operates at least 50 properties, nearly all purchased for over $1 million with mortgages.
Fifty million-dollar properties. In one California city. For one birth tourism company.
A birth tourism agent described the industry’s return on investment as “higher than robbing a bank.”
A Chinese government lawyer encouraged the practice openly: “Birth tourism is an opportunity to make money. Operators should not waste this opportunity.”
The Chinese government doesn’t discourage birth tourism. It endorses it. Promotes it. Profits from it.
The Welfare Pitch
Chinese birth tourism companies don’t sell American values. They sell American benefits.
Schweizer reveals the marketing: “Free education from junior high school to public high school.” “Senior supplement benefits [Social Security and Medicare] when you are living overseas.” Parents can “emigrate to the United States without quota restrictions and go to California to enjoy the sunshine after retirement, as well as enjoy California’s white card program for the elderly and free medical care.”
The pitch isn’t freedom. It’s free stuff.
Come to America. Have a baby. Get citizenship. Return to China. Raise the child Chinese. Then, decades later, use the child’s citizenship to immigrate as a guardian, collect Social Security, access Medicare, and retire in California on American taxpayers’ dime.
The entire lifecycle is planned. From birth to retirement. American citizenship as a financial instrument, not an identity.
CCP Officials and Military Officers
This isn’t just wealthy Chinese families gaming the system for personal benefit.
Schweizer documents that birth tourism client lists include Chinese government tax officials, executives at China Telecom, Chinese Central Television employees, Bank of China executives, workers at the government’s radio propaganda agency, and members of the “feared” Public Security Bureau.
The Public Security Bureau. China’s internal security apparatus — responsible for surveillance, political repression, and maintaining Communist Party control.
Their employees are having American babies.
And a Chinese military officer had three.
These aren’t people fleeing Communist China. These are people serving Communist China — who are simultaneously securing American citizenship for their children as a strategic asset.
The Hong Kong Playbook
Schweizer places Chinese birth tourism in a broader strategic context that’s chilling.
When Britain began transitioning Hong Kong to Chinese rule in 1997, Beijing engineered the migration of over 83,000 Chinese nationals with fake identities into the territory.
Those 83,000 represented 1.4% of Hong Kong’s population — but 9.12% of its voting population.
Scholar Yin Qian described them as “fifth columnists” who “carry the Chinese government’s official blessing” and served as “Beijing’s invisible hand to steer the territory in the designed direction.”
Mass migration as a strategic weapon. Deployed by Beijing. In Hong Kong. With documented results.
Now consider tens of thousands of Chinese anchor babies born in the United States under Obama’s policies. Children who are American citizens. Who can vote at 18. Who can sponsor parental immigration. Who can access every benefit of American citizenship while maintaining connections to — and potentially allegiance to — the Chinese Communist Party.
The Hong Kong operation was documented, analyzed, and verified. The American operation is happening in real time.
Trump Ended Birthright Tourism Visas
During his first term, Trump moved to restrict birth tourism by issuing rules that allowed consular officers to deny visas to applicants they believed were traveling to the U.S. primarily to give birth.
Obama’s directive had removed that discretion. Trump restored it.
The birth tourism industry fought back through legal challenges, media campaigns, and lobbying. The Biden administration relaxed enforcement.
Now, in his second term, Trump faces the accumulated consequence of Obama’s policies: an unknown number of Chinese citizens born on American soil to parents serving the Chinese Communist Party, military, and intelligence apparatus.
Those children are American citizens. That citizenship is constitutionally protected. The strategic implications are permanent.
“The Manchurian Generation”
Schweizer titles his chapter “China: The Manchurian Generation.”
The reference is to “The Manchurian Candidate” — a novel about a foreign power creating sleeper agents through manipulation of American citizens.
Schweizer isn’t suggesting every Chinese anchor baby is a sleeper agent. He’s identifying a structural vulnerability that the Chinese government has deliberately exploited.
American-born children of CCP officials have dual access: American citizenship with all its rights and benefits, plus familial and cultural connections to the Chinese Communist Party.
Some will become ordinary Americans. Others will maintain their connections to Beijing. A few may be actively cultivated by Chinese intelligence.
The point isn’t that every child is a threat. The point is that the system was designed — by Obama’s policies and Beijing’s strategy — to create a population with divided loyalties that China can exploit selectively.
Obama Built This on Purpose
The consular directive wasn’t an accident. The ten-year visa agreement wasn’t an oversight. Together, they constituted a deliberate policy choice that made Chinese birth tourism not just possible but frictionless.
Obama knew what the policies would produce. His administration was briefed on birth tourism trends. They understood the strategic implications.
They did it anyway.
Why? Because the Obama administration’s theory of engagement held that closer ties with China — economic, cultural, personal — would moderate Beijing’s behavior and integrate China into the liberal international order.
That theory failed catastrophically. China didn’t moderate. It militarized the South China Sea. It stole American intellectual property on an industrial scale. It launched the most aggressive espionage campaign in history against the United States.
And it used Obama’s birth tourism policies to plant tens of thousands of citizens with American passports inside the strategic planning of the Chinese Communist Party.
Obama didn’t just fail to prevent a threat. He built the infrastructure that made it possible.