Illegal immigration and birthright citizenship tourism: the perfect pairing of threats to American sovereignty and security, according to one top expert. Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution Wednesday, addressing the threat posed by birthright citizenship, a concept that has been exploited by foreign enemies like the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Schweizer relayed that CCP officials will arrange to have their children born in the U.S. in order for them to gain automatic U.S. citizenship.

Subcommittee Chairman Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), an outspoken opponent of mass immigration, asserted during the hearing, “Citizenship should never be a loophole.” He noted that birthright citizenship, rooted in an 1898 U.S. Supreme Court decision, was originally meant to grant citizenship to the children of freed slaves and was never intended to allow foreign enemies, illegal immigrants, and other subversive elements to automatically gain U.S. citizenship. “An entire birth tourism industry has emerged around that goal; illegal immigration is fueled by the belief that a child born here will receive automatic citizenship.”

Schweizer informed the subcommittee that he has tracked over 1,000 CCP-linked birth tourism companies that focus on or specialize in U.S. citizenship. “Our federal government does not track this information because there is no centralized collection of information on the nationality of parents or giving birth,” he reported, pointing to flaws in longstanding, lax immigration policy. The CCP, Schweizer said, actually prints articles assisting wealthy and powerful CCP members in exploiting U.S. immigration law to ensure that their children are born with U.S. citizenship. “There is a certain irony there — the CCP officials are explaining constitutional rights to their own elite,” he said. “There are nationalist websites that talk about it. There is discussion about this in the Chinese media. There’s no condemnation of it.”

According to Schweizer’s testimony, the CCP birth tourism industry began around 2013 or 2014. Those exploiting the system, Schweizer added, are not “political dissidents,” but high-ranking CCP officials, including military officers, Ministry of Propaganda officers, and other “CCP establishment” personnel. “So if you do the math, you’re potentially looking at anywhere from between 750,000 to 1.5 million U.S. citizens that are being raised in China because these children are born here,” he warned. “As soon as they are capable of flying, they are flown back to China and that is where they will be raised.”

Appearing on Wednesday night’s episode of “Washington Watch,” Schweizer explained in further detail that once U.S.-born Chinese children turn 18, they will “be able to vote in our elections, donate to political campaigns, apply for government jobs.” He pointed out that those are the children of CCP officials, raised in China under the watchful eye of the CCP establishment. “So one component of it is this birth tourism, where they come to the United States and give birth. The other one, that I think is even more insidious, involves surrogacy,” Schweizer continued. CCP officials, he said, will pay American women anywhere from $50,000 to $60,000 to carry their children (via artificial insemination) and give birth to them.

While he said that exact statistics on this practice are imprecise, Schweizer pointed to the example of a CCP-linked real estate tycoon who had obtained 26 U.S.-Chinese children through surrogacy, and another who had at least 100 children via surrogacy. “The child is now a U.S. citizen, having been born here, but also the biological mother is American. But then that child, again, goes back to China, sometimes not even picked up by the parents, and they are raised in China,” Schweizer said. “So this presents a national security problem and I think also a humanitarian crisis in a very real way for these children.”

Last year, President Donald Trump issued an executive order dismantling birthright citizenship. While that order has been temporarily put on hold by federal judges, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments early next month in the case, which could potentially overturn the high court’s longstanding precedent on the subject and safeguard American citizenship for the children of Americans. “If they come back and say that birthright citizenship is absolute — that if you are here, you are within the borders, you are allowed to do this — then we are in deep, deep, deep trouble,” Schweizer opined of the impending Supreme Court judgment. “This is a serious national security concern that really demands attention, and I’m hoping the court is going to be reasonable and recognize that the Constitution is not a suicide pact, that there should be the ability of the executive and the legislative branches to put limitations on what birthright citizenship really means.”

“The court has to look at this. This is not just simply a question of people who have entered the country illegally and may be working here and may have families here,” Schweizer added. “This is a problem of people who literally have no connection, their children have no connection to the country, other than the fact that their mother happened to have been here for a fleeting moment, to give birth for the sole purpose of getting citizenship for their child.”

Schweizer, who recently authored the book “The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon,” also addressed the threat posed by mass immigration from Muslim countries in the Middle East. “With mass migration, people come, they bring their families; they also bring political networks. And these political networks, whether it’s involving the Muslim Brotherhood or China or Mexico, these political networks are giving one message to migrants that have entered the country, whether legally or illegally, and that is, ‘Do not assimilate,’” he recounted.

Officials affiliated with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) have advised Muslim immigrants not to assimilate, to reject American culture, and to instead consider themselves citizens of their Muslim home countries first and foremost. Schweizer summarized the mindset: “We cannot accept these institutions. We cannot accept this way of life. We are in this country as Muslims for one purpose, and that is to change the country both politically and spiritually.” Officials from the Mexican government, he noted, have given similar advice to immigrants, urging them to remain loyal to Mexico over the U.S. and mocking and ostracizing Mexican immigrants who embrace American culture.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins agreed, noting that some Christians cite isolated passages from Scripture to justify mass immigration. “They failed to recognize that in the Old Testament, the provisions for allowing foreigners to come and reside is to adopt the ways and the customs of the host country,” Perkins noted. “So there’s that assimilation that has to take place. Without that, you can’t be a country.”