Ricketts Announces Support for Reforming Birthright Citizenship

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Pete Ricketts (R-NE) announced his support for reforming birthright citizenship: “Birthright citizenship was included in the U.S. Constitution to reconcile an incredible error in America.  It was added to ensure those freed from slavery were granted American citizenship.  This made our nation better. Today, birthright citizenship is being exploited by bad actors and our adversaries.  We are one of the only nations that lacks commonsense guardrails on birthright citizenship.  This incentivizes illegal immigration and promotes birth tourism.  Illegal immigrants and non-citizens are crossing our borders and having children, who are then given American citizenship automatically.  Our current policy also allows bad actors to game the system with birth tourism.  Unrestrained birthright citizenship hands Communist China an opportunity to infiltrate our country.  We must reform the system. I am proud to be an American.  I understand why others want to be a citizen of our great nation.  But becoming an American is a privilege, not a right.  It is about more than being born on our soil.  It’s about committing to our nation’s promise and holding to our values of freedom and democracy.  I support reforming birthright citizenship in America.” Ricketts is a co-sponsor of two pieces of legislation that would reform birthright citizenship: The Birthright Citizenship Act of 2025 , introduced by the late Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), would stop the practice of granting citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants and the children of non-immigrants in the U.S. on temporary visas. The Stopping Adversarial Foreign Exploitation of Kids in Domestic Surrogacy (SAFE KIDS) Act , introduced by Senator Rick Scott (R-FL), would prevent adversarial nations, including Communist China, from using American surrogates to obtain U.S. citizenship for their children and traffic infants abroad.