The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution gives automatic citizenship to any baby born in the United States. Immigrants arriving in the United States to give birth so their children will automatically become American citizens are not just poor or from Latin America, as anti-immigration advocates insist. Some are wealthy and from China, as a recent case in Southern California demonstrates.

 

In the city of San Gabriel, police and other officials uncovered a string of neighborhood houses used by Chinese “maternity tourists” who spent months in the U.S. on tourist visas. After having their babies, the women returned home with their children and the prized birth certificates.

 

No one knows how many foreign women are using maternity tourism to gain citizenship for their offspring, but businesses in China, Mexico and South Korea advertise packages that arrange for doctors, insurance and medical care. The trips can cost tens of thousands of dollars.

 

Figures from 2008 provided by the National Center for Health Statistics show births to foreign residents represented only a tiny fraction of all babies born that year—7,462 out of approximately 4.3 million, although this figure does not include births to illegal immigrants.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Arriving as Pregnant Tourists, Leaving With American Babies (by Jennifer Medina, New York Times)

Birthing Tourism: San Gabriel Maternity Center for Chinese Women Shut Down (by Ching-Ching Ni, Los Angeles Times)

The Tourists' Baby Boom (by Mai Ya, China Daily)