Heritage Foundation's Emma Waters suggests American-born children raised in China will be used to “subvert the United States”
Waters says they could be “stealing research, stealing intelligence, or running for office or secretive or select positions”
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Citation
From the July 9, 2026, edition of The Tenpenny Files, streamed on Rumble
EMMA WATERS (HERITAGE FOUNDATION SENIOR POLICY ANALYST): In the course of my research on national and international surrogacy, I came across a few academic reports that noted that cross-border surrogacy — where a foreign national comes to another country to access their surrogates, their agencies, and their health services — was growing in popularity. And in fact, the biggest area that we were seeing grow was actually Chinese nationals from mainland China coming to the United States to rent the womb of American women. And it noted that one of the key drivers or motivations for this was birthright citizenship because, when that child was born, they would gain and maintain the full rights of U.S. citizenship — even though their parents were foreign nationals, and even though that child would actually be raised fully abroad. And when I read that, I thought, oh my goodness. We have a massive case of immigration fraud, national security risk, and a violation of the well-being of children and the women serving as surrogates.
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SHERRI TENPENNY (HOST): What sort of national security implications does this sort of process add? And what does this — why did the Supreme Court support this?
WATERS: Such a great question. So, speaking to the national security risks of birth tourism, and particularly of surrogacy birth tourism — because the child is simply being born here and being raised abroad, you have cases where there are thousands, even hundreds of thousands of individuals, who have full U.S. citizenship, and in the eyes of the law would be viewed as a natural-born citizen like you and I, who were born and raised here, and yet are being raised in a foreign country, predominantly China, who has a vested interest in undermining and defeating the United States. We're in a cold war with China. And so you have these children who are being raised culturally, ethnically, geographically in China, who then have all access to sensitive research jobs in government positions or research positions. These children, when they turn 21, can actually apply for a visa to sponsor their extended family to becoming citizens. And so there are cases of surrogacy agencies openly advertising commercial surrogacy as a cheaper option than an EB-5 visa, which would be the proper immigration steps you should take. So sidestep immigration laws in the United States by citizenship through surrogacy.
But you also have to keep in mind that when that surrogate-born child — even though they're ethnically, geographically, and culturally raised in China — turns 35, he could run for president.
TENPENNY: Oh my goodness.
WATERS: He could hold office. He has — there are no restrictions on what these surrogate-born children could or couldn't do because they are full citizens, regardless of the fact that they are not raised here. They don't love America. They don't view America as their home. Right? They're not patriotic in any sense.
And so it's a massive national security risk because now the United States doesn't know who these children are. We have no idea at what point do they start reemigrating. And there are various reports on this where some will say, well, we know the CCP does have a vested interest. Others would say the CCP doesn't have a vested interest. But what we do know regardless is that the Communist Party of China will take any opportunity to subvert the United States. And if they have thousands or hundreds of thousands of young men and women growing up with full U.S. citizenship, I think that it is very likely they will use that to the best of their advantage to undermine the United States in coming years, whether that's stealing research, stealing intelligence, or running for office or secretive or select positions because of that.