“Maternity Tourism” Business Booming in California
March 30, 2011
The New York Times story sets the scene of a shocking situation in the foothills of San Gabriel, California:
The building inspectors and police officers walked into the small row of connected town houses here knowing something was amiss. Neighbors had complained about noise and a lot of pregnant women coming and going. And when they went into a kitchen they saw a row of clear bassinets holding several infants, with a woman acting as a nurse hovering over them.
Women from around the world come here in the final days of their pregnancy to give birth to “American” babies. They come, these parturient pilgrims, from China, Turkey, South Korea, and from countries around the globe to take advantage of what they’ve been told is a provision in the U.S. Constitution that grants their opportunistic offspring the boon of automatic American citizenship.
Covering the same story as it unfolded in its own backyard, the Los Angeles Times reports that:
The building inspectors and police officers walked into the small row of connected town houses here knowing something was amiss. Neighbors had complained about noise and a lot of pregnant women coming and going. And when they went into a kitchen they saw a row of clear bassinets holding several infants, with a woman acting as a nurse hovering over them.
Women from around the world come here in the final days of their pregnancy to give birth to “American” babies. They come, these parturient pilgrims, from China, Turkey, South Korea, and from countries around the globe to take advantage of what they’ve been told is a provision in the U.S. Constitution that grants their opportunistic offspring the boon of automatic American citizenship.
Covering the same story as it unfolded in its own backyard, the Los Angeles Times reports that:
Southern California has become a hub of so-called birthing tourism. Operators of such centers tend to try to blend in, attracting as little attention as possible.
Upon interviewing the women occupying these makeshift maternity wards, city social workers discovered that they had paid grand sums for the chance to deliver their babies within the borders of the United States. According to the piece in the New York Times, companies in their home countries prey on these women, enticing them with offers to give birth to Americans.
Businesses in China, Mexico and South Korea advertise packages that arrange for doctors, insurance and postpartum care. And the Marmara, a Turkish-owned hotel on the Upper East Side in New York City, has advertised monthlong “baby stays” that come with a stroller.
Recently, members of Congress have questioned the constitutionality of the grant of automatic citizenship to children born in the United States whose parents are illegal aliens. The subject of the inelegantly nicknamed “anchor babies” is seen as a crucial battle in the wider war against the invasion of the United States by millions of illegal aliens.
The anchor in “anchor babies” refers to the purported ability of children born in the United States to foreign parents to sponsor those parents in their request for permanent residency here. According to the argument, as citizens of the United States, those children have the right to sponsor the immigration efforts of family members seeking legal immigration status.
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