A new book by investigative journalist Peter Schweizer examines the long-term implications of U.S. birthright citizenship policies, focusing on a practice known as birth tourism and its potential effects on future elections, immigration flows, and national security considerations. In The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon, Schweizer writes that more than one million people born in the United States to Chinese nationals—many of whom later returned to China—will become eligible voters in the coming years as they reach adulthood. Schweizer’s analysis centers on how existing immigration laws operate, how they have been used in practice, and what those outcomes could mean as the children involved become legal adults under U.S. law.
Schweizer describes birth tourism as a process in which foreign nationals, particularly from China, travel to the United States to give birth so their children automatically receive U.S. citizenship. One consequence of this status, he notes, is the ability for those children to later sponsor their parents for permanent residency. To illustrate the scale of the practice, Schweizer cites the U.S. territory of Saipan, writing that “[m]ore than 70 percent of the newborns in Saipan are PRC birth tourist parents who utilize the territory’s forty-five-day visa-free visitation rules and the ‘Covenant of the Northern Mariana Islands’ to guarantee that their children will have American citizenship.” Because the federal government does not directly track birth tourism, Schweizer writes that precise numbers are unknown, though estimates vary widely.
According to Schweizer, Chinese officials estimate that roughly 50,000 Chinese nationals per year participate in birth tourism, while scholars such as Australian-based professor Salvator Babones place the number higher. Babones writes, “With up to 100,000 Chinese babies being born US citizens every year, birth tourism may result in millions of new elite Chinese-Americans.” Schweizer also cites Media Research, a Chinese data analysis company, which estimated that in 2018 alone, 150,000 people traveled from China to the United States for birth tourism. Based on these figures, Schweizer writes that “at least 750,000 and possibly as many as 1.5 million Chinese, who are also American citizens by virtue of being born here, now growing toward adulthood in China.”
Schweizer argues that the issue presents unique policy questions because, as he writes, “perhaps more than a million Chinese nationals have become US citizens by virtue of being born here, but have no memories or allegiance to our country.” He further explains: “[T]hey are often the children of elites who have prospered in the communist Chinese system. They have been suitably indoctrinated in CCP-controlled schools and taught about US values, culture, or history, from a distorted CCP perspective. Technically, as American citizens, they are eligible to vote in US elections and can relocate to the United States at any time. When they turn twenty-one, they can sponsor their parents to come here, too, as permanent residents.” Schweizer adds that, based on available data, “this tidal wave could hit American society beginning in 2030, when the first baby wave reaches eighteen years old.”
The book places the growth of birth tourism largely within the past 15 years. Schweizer writes that “the Obama administration encouraged this practice,” and that it expanded rapidly during that period. He further states that, “Especially in China, birth tourism is highly organized, supported by the Chinese Communist Party, and perhaps represents a covert method of injecting millions of ‘citizens’ into America… [M]any of the parents involved are pillars of the Chinese elite: CCP members, senior officials of intelligence agencies, and government ministers.” Schweizer characterizes the practice as targeting “a vulnerability in US immigration law,” raising questions about how existing statutes interact with geopolitical competition and long-term demographic trends.
In addition to birth tourism, Schweizer describes what he calls the use of U.S.-based surrogacy arrangements by Chinese nationals. He writes that another method involves “the widespread use of surrogate mothers in the United States to carry the children of senior CCP officials,” adding, “These officials then collect the children at birth and raise them back in China.” As an example, Schweizer cites Guojun Xuan, described in the book as a senior Chinese Communist Party official with extensive U.S. real estate holdings. Schweizer writes that Xuan has spent more than $100 million on California real estate and has an interest in “producing children via surrogacy with woman across the United States.”
Schweizer details an incident involving Xuan in May 2025, writing: “In May 2025, when a two-month-old infant under his care was hospitalized with head injuries, officials found fifteen children living in his $4.1 million Arcadia, California, mansion, ranging in ages from two months up to thirteen years. In total, they found twenty-one children connected to the CCP member.” He adds that Xuan “arranged the births of his children through mothers spread throughout the United States,” using Mark Surrogacy Investment LLC, which Schweizer describes as operating “as a multistate embryo pipeline.” According to the book, “Surrogates often were unaware that others were carrying children for the same couple at the same time.”
Schweizer writes that this case represents “the tip of a very large iceberg of children with Chinese parents being produced via surrogacy with American woman and thereby US citizens who will join the legions of others born here via birth tourism.” He adds that, “Records in California indicate there are 107 companies with the word surrogacy in the name in the state, all owned by Chinese individuals.” The book frames these developments as raising broader questions about how U.S. immigration, citizenship, and family sponsorship laws operate in practice, and what their long-term implications may be for elections, public policy, and national governance.
