A United States Congressman from Wisconsin, Tom Tiffany, has written a letter to the Department of Homeland Security urging for the termination of the Guam-Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) Visa Waiver Program for Chinese nationals.
The scheme permits the entry of Chinese tourists to CNMI and Guam without being subject to US visa requirements, VisaGuide.World reports.
Through the letter addressed to the DHS Secretary, Kristi Noem, Tiffany urged DHS to take steps to rescind a recent Biden administration rule and other DHC policies that permit visa-free travel for Chinese nationals to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, RNZ explains.
2nd Call for DHS to Terminate Visa Waiver Program for CNMI
This is not the first time that the US Congressman has written a letter to the DHS for the same reason. A similar step, Tiffany took in 2020, calling the DHS to take action on the matter.
I wrote to one of your predecessors asking that the administration immediately end the systemic abuse of parole authority that was used to permit nationals of Communist China to enter the CNMI outside of normal visa rules.
In the letter, Tiffany said that whether through a new territorial waiver or the widespread use of parole, visa-free travel to the US for nationals of Communist China causes national security, public safety as well as immigration fraud concerns.
Visa-Free Entry for Chinese Nationals Led to Surge in Birth Tourism
Tiffany also added that in 2009, the Obama administration started the misguided and irregular categorical parole program for nationals of China to travel to CNMI.
As a result, citizens of the People’s Republic of China were able to sidestep the legal requirement that they first obtain a tourist visa before entering the CNMI. Not surprisingly, the volume of entries by Chinese nationals skyrocketed a troubling rise in ‘birth tourism.
According to him, this led to the births of foreign visitors to the CNMI, increasing from less than ten in 2009 to nearly 600 in 2018.
Tiffany said that the practice of foreign nationals giving birth on Saipan became so popular that such births surpassed the number of births to legal US residents there in recent years.
Considering it “even worse”, he said that the resulting US citizen children are then eligible to petition for green cards for their entire family, in the future.
In January 2025, the United States President, Donald Trump, signed an order aiming to end birthright citizenship for children of persons staying in the US irregularly. However, the executive order was recently blocked by a third federal judge.