Sen. Pete Ricketts announces support for reforms to birthright citizenship

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) — Sen. Pete Ricketts announced he is in favor of the reformation of birthright citizenship.

Ricketts said people are taking advantage of the current status.

“Today, birthright citizenship is being exploited by bad actors and our adversaries. We are one of the only nations that lacks commonsense guardrails on birthright citizenship,” said Ricketts. “This incentivizes illegal immigration and promotes birth tourism. Illegal immigrants and non-citizens are crossing our borders and having children, who are then given American citizenship automatically. Our current policy also allows bad actors to game the system with birth tourism. Unrestrained birthright citizenship hands Communist China an opportunity to infiltrate our country. We must reform the system.”

Ricketts said he has understanding for people would want to be a citizen of the U.S., but states ‘it is a privilege, not a right’.

He co-sponsors two pieces of legislation that would reform birthright citizenship, including the Birthright Citizenship Act of 2025 and Stopping Adversarial Foreign Exploitation of Kids in Domestic Surrogacy (SAFE KIDS) Act.