The United States is no longer pretending that a tourist visa plus a delivery room equals a legitimate path to American citizenship.
On September 23, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a new visa-restriction policy under Section 212(a)(3)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act aimed at the people who actually run the business: owners and managers of commercial birth-tourism networks, visa "fixers" who coach applicants to lie, foreign medical providers who arrange the trips and allegedly tap Medicaid, and anyone else who knowingly enables the trade. Family members of those targets can be swept in as well.
In short, people selling packages to facilitate US entry are on notice (perhaps they should focus on EB-5s like the Kushners).These foreign commercial networks advertise U.S. citizenship as a package - collecting tens of thousands of dollars to coach clients on what to say at the consulate, book housing near hospitals, and deliver a passport-eligible infant. The State Department's position is that this is fraud against the immigration system, not "tourism."
With six weeks until midterms, Rubio's announcement follows of President Trump's August 6 Executive Order 14419, Ending Birth Tourism - aimed at those entering on a nonimmigrant visa for the purpose of giving birth on U.S. soil - or helping someone else do it - and directed State and Homeland Security to deny visas, revoke them, bar re-entry, and act against facilitators. Days after Trump's EO, a Birth Tourism Prevention Task Force was assembled. About a month ago, officials said more than 750 visas tied to suspected birth-tourism activity had been revoked, with more coming. Meanwhile, embassy investigations earlier in the year claimed to have dismantled networks in West Africa (100-plus cases with fraudulent documents and fixers), Europe (400-plus suspected cases since 2024 tied to at least six companies), and North Africa (100-plus visa revocations).
Here's How The Sausage Is MadePregnant women - disproportionately from China, Russia, Nigeria, Turkey, and a handful of other countries - fly in on B-1/B-2 visitor visas, stay in "maternity hotels" or rented houses, deliver, obtain a birth certificate and Social Security number, and leave. The child is treated as a U.S. citizen, and when 21 years later, that child can petition for parents. Neat trick.
It's not just the poors either - packages have been marketed for $20,000 to $100,000: housing, nannies, shopping trips, coaching on how to answer consular questions, and sometimes advice on how to keep hospital bills off the books or shift them onto public programs. In 2019, federal prosecutors in Southern California took down operations charging Chinese clients six figures. This month, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced a Houston-area postpartum center had agreed to close after the state alleged it facilitated more than 1,000 births to Chinese nationals. Gov. Greg Abbott had already ordered state agencies to hunt licensed providers participating in the schemes. The 2020 Trump-era consular rule already advised officers they could deny visas if they believed the primary purpose of travel was to obtain citizenship for a child.
The H-1B pipeline is getting the same treatment: a wage-weighted lottery cut FY2027 registrations 38%, even as the courts have blocked Trump's $100,000 fee.
How Many Are We Talking About?The conservative Center for Immigration Studies, using older Census-to-vital-records comparisons, has estimated 20,000 to 26,000 tourist births a year. CIS research director Steven Camarota told Congress this month that if those rates held, 200,000 to 300,000 children were born to birth tourists over the last decade. CDC data show fewer than 10,000 births in 2024 to mothers listing a foreign address - a figure almost everyone agrees undercounts women who use a U.S. hotel or rental as their "residence."
Globally - Jus soli in its American form is an outlier among developed states. Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Ireland, and much of Europe require a citizen or permanent-resident parent. The United States and Canada remain the G7 holdouts. A Conservative amendment to Bill C-3 that would have required at least one citizen or permanent-resident parent was voted down in October 2025; Canadian citizenship still attaches automatically to nearly anyone born on Canadian soil, diplomats excepted. The United States spent decades treating a plane ticket and a due date as sufficient allegiance.
Supreme PivotAfter the Supreme Court struck down Trump's broader day-one attempt to withhold birthright citizenship from children of illegal aliens and temporary visa holders, the White House went in a different direction - going after visa fraud, commercial facilitation, and the use of nonimmigrant categories for a permanent benefit.
Here's their angle:
So - in about three seconds, advocacy groups will call it racial profiling of Chinese and Russian applicants. Hospitals that marketed "birth packages" will lawyer up. Fixers will move advertising off open WeChat groups and into quieter channels, and pregnant women will keep trying to make it onto US soil. The order also contemplates denial of entry and removal for prior participants.
Legislation is already in the hopper - including a Ban Birth Tourism Act that would make seeking admission as a B visa holder for birth tourism an explicit ground of inadmissibility. The administration is not waiting for Congress.
American citizenship shouldn't have loopholes.
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Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 09:35President Trump reportedly expressed concern over the weakness of the yen when he met Japan’s prime minister this week as the currency came under more pressure against the dollar.
The FT reports that Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama Satsuki Katayama told reporters in Tokyo that Trump and Sanae Takaichi discussed the yen in talks in New York on Tuesday.
The US president “expressed his concern” while Takaichi told Trump that she saw an undervalued yen as “problematic”, Katayama said.
The yen jumped around 1% against the dollar following the remarks - its best day in two weeks...
The finance minister also said she would continue to coordinate with her US counterpart Scott Bessent, reinforcing the signal that both governments are paying close attention to the currency’s depreciation.
“In light of [the Trump-Takaichi] meeting, Treasury secretary Bessent and I will continue to communicate closely on a range of matters, including foreign exchange,” Katayama added.
Last week, the BoJ raised rates to the highest level in 31 years, but the move did little to structurally strengthen the yen, even as the central bank’s governor Kazuo Ueda hinted strongly that there could be further tightening this year.
Options sentiment toward the yen turned more bullish lately, reflecting increased hedging demand against the risk of Japanese intervention.
“Intervention risk should put a ceiling on further yen weakness,” said Moh Siong Sim, a strategist at Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp.
“More importantly, the yen may be nearing a turning point as Trump’s concerns over its weakness point to deeper US-Japan coordination to support the currency.”
Japan and the US carried out their first coordinated yen-buying intervention since 1998 this summer after the currency weakened beyond 160. Japan spent a record ¥15.4 trillion ($97.4 billion) intervening in the month through Aug. 26, according to Finance Ministry data.
“This is largely another way of jawboning in my view,” said Charu Chanana, chief investment strategist at Saxo Markets.
“Unless it is followed by actual policy coordination, intervention or a clearer BOJ tightening path, I don’t think it changes the underlying yen story materially”
Bessent has also continued to signal support for a stronger yen, potentially giving Japanese warnings greater weight with traders than in previous episodes of currency weakness.
Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 09:12Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.ocm,
Another Russian refinery was taken offline on Friday following a Ukrainian drone attack, in a sign that Ukraine and Russia continue to trade strikes on energy infrastructure despite separate talks with U.S. officials in New York aimed at de-escalation.
The Novoshakhtinsk refinery in the southern Russian region of Rostov was hit by drones and had to be taken offline, regional governor Yury Slyusar said in a post on Telegram early on Friday.
As a result of the drone attacks, the Novoshakhtinsk refinery, which has the capacity to process 110,000 barrels of crude oil per day, was damaged and halted operations, the official said.
25 September 2026: Reported Ukrainian strikes overnight hit at least five sites across Russia and occupied Ukraine:
• Novoshakhtinsk Oil Products Plant, near Novoshakhtinsk, Rostov Oblast
• NPP Zavod Iskra, Ulyanovsk, Ulyanovsk Oblast
• Lukoil-Permnefteorgsintez refinery,… pic.twitter.com/9E3lHv9MtV
Ukraine continues its campaign to cripple Russian refining capacity, fuel supply, and export revenues. Due to the low refinery production, Russia has been forced to ban diesel exports for months and is likely to extend the ban beyond September 30. The ban was initially introduced in July as Ukraine has continuously taken Russian refineries offline.
Last week, Ukraine hit an oil refinery near Moscow, damaging a processing plant co-owned by Rosneft and Gazprom Neft.
Recent attacks from both sides show that there isn't any truce in attacking energy sites.
Ukraine's forces hit the refinery in Yaroslavl with drones last week, while Russia attacked infrastructure in Kyiv.
Russian daily Vedomosti reported last week that the government would extend its ban on diesel exports for all fuel producers to October 31, due to delayed refinery maintenance and the need to rebuild fuel reserves before winter.
Russia has been suffering from a gasoline and diesel crunch since the spring, when Ukraine intensified its drone attacks at Russian refineries, aiming to cripple fuel supply to the front lines and to the domestic Russian market.
The Russian ban on diesel exports has added to the Middle East crisis to tighten global middle distillate markets.
Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 09:01With PMIs soaring to multi-year highs earlier in the week, US durable goods orders were expected to be mixed in preliminary August data.
And mixed it was (with plenty of revisions)... the headline print was unchanged MoM (better than the 0.3% MoM decline expected) with a small revision lower for July.
Boeing reported fewer orders in August compared with the prior month.
However, Ex-Transports disappointed, rising just 0.3% MoM (half the expected 0.6% MoM rise) with a revision higher for July. That leaves core orders up 11.1% YoY - the highest since Q2 2022.
But, that is still the 17th straight monthly rise in core durable goods orders...
Additionally, Capital Goods Orders (non-defense, Ex-Air) soared 1.6% MoM (more than double the 0.56% MoM expected)
Under the hood, the big driver appears to be AI Spend (rather unsurprisingly)...
This segment includes:
Telephone Apparatus: Wired and wireless telephones, private branch exchange (PBX) equipment, and VoIP equipment.
Broadcast and Wireless Equipment: Radio and television broadcast antennas, cellular tower electronics, and two-way radios.
Network Equipment: Routers, switches, local area network (LAN) and wide area network (WAN) equipment, and fiber-optic transmission gear
Is it any wonder that Trump doesn't want a 'pause' on AI Spend.
Finally, shipments figures (which actually plug into GDP) were in line with expectations (with July revised up), suggesting resilience to Q3 forecasts.
Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 08:43