Peter Schweizer warns China is pushing its citizens to get US citizenship for geopolitical edge
WASHINGTON, DC: China is encouraging its citizens to obtain US citizenship, leveraging aspects of America’s immigration and birthright citizenship system.
Beijing’s aim behind doing this is to ultimately benefit politically and strategically, author and investigative journalist Peter Schweizer said.
Schweizer, appearing on a podcast with conservative political commentator Liz wheeler, explained China’s approach to intervening in the US from inside.
China’s ‘birth tourism’ strategy against US
Under the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment, children born on American soil are automatically granted citizenship. This is called birthright citizenship.
Schweizer said that policy has been exploited by Chinese nationals who travel to the United States expressly to give birth.
He claims that the Chinese government has encouraged elites in the country to take their pregnant wives to the US and give birth to a child there so that the child is an American citizen.
There's a massive industry in China that is open to the public, he alleged in the podcast.
“They advertise all over Chinese social media saying, ‘If you pay us $50-60,000, we will take care of you. We'll fly you to the United States. We'll get you through customs. We'll arrange medical care. We'll get an apartment for you to stay in. Your child will be born. When your child's ready to travel, we'll get you back to China’,” Schweizer alleged.
Schweizer then elaborated on the scale of such immigration. He cited Chinese government data as showing that for the past 13 years, roughly 100,000 Chinese babies have been born in the US per year.
“So do the math. That's 1 million [people],” he said.
Schweizer also highlighted the growing role of surrogate arrangements.
Under this, wealthy Chinese individuals contract US women to carry children that are then taken back to China.
“We found just in Southern California 107 Chinese surrogacy companies,” he said, adding that the full scope of these arrangements is uncertain.
China creating US voters loyal to CCP
Schweizer argued that these births create a pool of future voters and politically connected citizens who could, decades later, exert influence in US elections and policy debates.
He said that these are Chinese babies that were born in the United States who are being taken back to China by their parents, to be raised in the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) system.
“When they turn 18, they’re going to be able to vote, they’re going to be able to donate to political campaigns, they’re going to be able to apply for government jobs,” the author added.
Schweizer described China’s effort as part of “weaponization” of immigration by foreign powers, saying that exploitation of US laws and institutions could offer Beijing an advantage over time.
“This is a massive vulnerability,” he said. “If you create a million voting-age US citizens over time who have ties back to China, you’ve created leverage.”
Schweizer urged a re-evaluation of how citizenship is granted and greater control over what he described as systemic vulnerabilities. “We have to stop it,” he said. “We have to change it. It has to end.”
Supreme Court to hear birthright citizenship case
The claims come as the US Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments over the scope of birthright citizenship in April.
After returning to office in 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order attempting to deny automatic citizenship to children born in the US to undocumented or temporarily present parents.
Lower courts blocked the order, and the Supreme Court agreed in late 2025 to review the case in 2026.
