Rep. Ogles to Newsmax: Bill limits birthright citizenship

Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., said his new Anchors Away Act can clear the House but faces an uncertain path in the Senate, telling Newsmax on Wednesday the bill is a direct legislative response to the Supreme Court's decision striking down President Donald Trump's executive order that attempted to limit birthright citizenship.

Ogles, a member of the House Financial Services and Homeland Security committees, appeared on "Bianca Across the Nation" after the high court's 6-3 ruling in Trump v. Barbara, which held that children born on U.S. soil to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are citizens at birth.

The lawmaker pitched his bill as the workaround.

"I think this bill or some version of it could certainly pass in the House," he said. "And of course, the real issue is what will the Senate do, if anything."

The measure, introduced June 30, amends the Immigration and Nationality Act to redefine when a child born in the United States is "subject to the jurisdiction" of the country and would bar entry to pregnant foreign nationals whose primary purpose is to secure U.S. citizenship for a child by giving birth here.

Ogles cast birth tourism as a national security threat centered on China.

"You have Chinese elite, communist elite going to Guam, coming to the homeland. They have a baby. Now that child is eligible for U.S. citizenship," he said. "That child is then taken back to China. They're raised as communists. They're raised to hate this country."

He offered an unverified estimate that "roughly a million Chinese" have been born in the United States through such schemes and could one day run for president.

"If that doesn't scare you, that a nation who hates us has literally sent a million babies here to get U.S. citizenship so that they could someday have a candidate in the White House," he said.

Ogles also drew a hard line against granting legal status to people already in the country illegally, warning that any such move short of full reform would function as amnesty.

"By giving them a legal status without comprehensive reform, it becomes a gateway or a pathway to citizenship," he said. "There can be no amnesty as part of that conversation."

Work visas are fine, he added, but anyone seeking citizenship must return to their home country, "apply the right way," and "stand in line like everyone else."

He also tied lax enforcement of immigration and voter registration laws to election integrity, arguing that noncitizens are being added to voter rolls through state motor vehicle agencies.

"We're seeing it all over the country where people are getting driver's licenses. They're automatically signed up to vote even though they're illegal," he said, adding that noncitizens who commit crimes should be deported and permanently barred from returning.

Ogles said the fix is to return to the framework that preceded the 1965 Hart-Celler Act, which overhauled national origin quotas.

"We had a fairly simple immigration system where we had quotas that we knew who was coming here. We had background checks and those sorts of things," he said.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has said lawmakers are weighing the Ogles approach.

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