Where
‘Anchor Babies’ Can Be a Lucrative Business
Wealthy
Chinese ‘birth tourists’ on visas spend freely in Southern California
By Miriam Jordan, As reported in
the Wall Street Journal
COSTA MESA , Calif.—Thousands of wealthy
foreign women, mostly Chinese, come to America each year for the express purpose
of having babies on U.S. soil. The women arrive on tourist
visas and typically go home with the baby after several months.
But before
the women leave with what critics have called “anchor babies,” they typically
spend thousands of dollars in private hospitals, high-end shopping malls and
luxury apartment complexes. That has made this practice, known as maternity or
birth tourism, a lucrative business in certain areas of the U.S. , including this one southeast of Los Angeles .
On a
recent Sunday at the upscale South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa , Mandarin speakers, many of them
visibly pregnant, far outnumbered other shoppers at Chanel, Christian Dior,
Giorgio Armani and other designer stores. Two women with protruding bellies
emerged from Fendi speaking Mandarin, one of them pushing a new-looking
stroller overflowing with bags. Down one mall corridor, seven women who
appeared pregnant chatted in Mandarin on a bench, shopping bags at their feet.
“They see
something they like, they buy it,” said Joanne Lee, one of three
Mandarin-speaking salespeople out of six at a Coach shop. “They buy multiple
pieces.”
The rise
of Chinese birth tourism reflects the new wealth in China , and uncertainty among some of its
citizens regarding the country’s long-term economic future. A child born in the
U.S. automatically becomes an American citizen, and
under federal law, when the child turns 21, he or she can sponsor foreign
family members for a green card, and eventually citizenship.
The Center
for Immigration Studies, which supports a crackdown on the practice and favors
more immigration restrictions overall, estimates that 40,000 women visit the U.S. annually on birth tourism, most
from China .
Birth
tourists represent a fraction of the 2.2 million Chinese visitors who spent
about $24 billion in the U.S. last year, according to the
Commerce Department. But Chinese tourists overall were the biggest foreign
spenders per capita, and the pregnant visitors typically stay much longer than
the two-week average for Chinese visitors.
Though
there are few hard figures on its full impact, maternity tourism has left a
noticeable imprint on the regional economy here in recent years. Federal
investigators, who raided several Southern California businesses that facilitate
maternity tourism in March on suspicion that they had committed crimes
including visa fraud and tax evasion, estimate that each woman pays $40,000 to
$80,000 on packages that include accommodation, transportation to hospitals, and
help getting passports for their newborns.
Karthick
Ramakrishnan, a public policy professor at the University of California,
Riverside, who has studied the phenomenon, estimates the women spend about $1
billion annually in the U.S., a figure that excludes discretionary spending on
the likes of shopping and dining out.
“These are
people of means who are not going to a county hospital to deliver their
babies,” he said.
Even if
some maternity tourism businesses face prosecution following the March raids,
Chinese women, their doctors and the hospitals where they give birth are
unlikely to be penalized, said Carl Shusterman, a former federal immigration
lawyer. It is legal for foreigners who are pregnant to travel to the U.S. and give birth, though it is considered
fraud to lie to U.S. officials about the purpose of a
visit to obtain a visa.
On a
recent evening in nearby Irvine , about a dozen Chinese pregnant
women strolled in the park of a resort-style residential complex. Most declined
to answer questions, but Wasie Su said she entered the U.S. on a multiple-entry tourist visa
to give birth. She plans to have a daughter in the country Nov. 20, and said
she was doing it for the child’s future, not as a plan to gain U.S. citizenship.
“It’s
worth the money and time spent here to give my daughter better options,” she
said, adding, “I got my family, friends and business” in China . “I don’t want a green card from
this baby.”
Donald
Trump, who is running for the GOP presidential nomination, suggested over the summer
that the U.S. ’s birthright citizenship policy be
reconsidered in light of the phenomenon of “anchor babies.” That move would
likely require changing the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, according to
legal experts.
While the
women from China entered legally, thousands of
women in the country illegally have babies on U.S. soil—295,000 in 2013, according to
the Pew Research Center . Those babies can later sponsor
their family for residency and enable them to secure public benefits.
Unlike the
poorer women, who are uninsured, most Chinese women have their children at
private hospitals. Newport Beach Hoag Hospital offers a “maternity package” in
which, assuming no complications, a vaginal delivery costs $7,500 and a
Caesarean-section birth costs $10,750. Those are substantially higher rates
than are paid to hospitals by health plans of insured American patients,
according to health-care experts.
In
response to questions about Chinese birth tourists, Hoag said it provides
health care to whoever seeks it. “Our only priority is providing the very best
care for those in need,” it said in a statement.
Though
they are popular with retailers and other businesses, some in Orange County voice displeasure about Chinese
birth tourists.
“It
bothers me that my grandchildren will be competing with these women’s babies to
get into college,” said John Michael of Irvine , a retired physician, adding: “My
family will have paid taxes all along, and they’ll walk right in.”
Some
businesses report that the number of pregnant Chinese women coming here
recently appears to be declining, which could be due to the faltering Chinese
economy, or the negative publicity from the federal investigation, they say.
A
salesperson at a Giorgio Armani had a different theory: It is the Year of the
Ram in the Chinese Zodiac, a less auspicious time for childbirth than the Year
of the Dragon, which ended in February.
Ben Ferro
(Editor)
Benferro
@insideins.com
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