US Birthright Citizenship: Surrogacy in America and Chinese ‘Baby Brokers’ issues

The executive order issued by Trump to deny citizenship rights to children born in the United States has not yet been put into effect. In January, President Trump signed a controversial executive order that sought to end birthright citizenship. 

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has started taking strong action against the corrupt practices that have been prevalent in America for a while.

NewsNation, a leading American news website, reported that the Trump administration is cracking down on an underground industry in California in which Chinese nationals pay money to baby brokers to bring pregnant Chinese women into the country and have their infants delivered as US citizens.

California has emerged as a center for “commercial surrogacy,” a practice whereby foreigners effectively rent American wombs in return for U.S. citizenship. According to officials, these couples frequently reside in luxury apartments or expensive homes in the Los Angeles suburbs, which locals refer to as “baby farms.” The trips are arranged by illegal Chinese birthing organizations, who charge up to $100,000. 

Crackdowns on these enterprises go back at least ten years, so the practice is not new. 

According to NewsNation, acting U.S. Attorney Joseph McNally says that this “system” birthed 30,000 Chinese babies into U.S. citizenship. “These were criminal enterprises that operated here in the United States and also people in China who would recruit. The organizers here had contacts at hospitals and had contacts there. It was an industry. The organizers of these schemes were responsible for the birth tourism of thousands of babies. They had a system in place,” said McNally.

The so-called “rent a womb” scheme, in which wealthy Chinese couples pay American women to serve as surrogates, is another popular option. Chinese children born to American women are instantly citizens of the United States but return to China right away. 

According to a report titled, The New Face of Birth Tourism: Chinese Nationals, American Surrogates, and Birthright Citizenship’ by The Heritage Foundation, the U.S. already has a problem with birth tourism when foreign women in late pregnancy enter the United States on tourist visas or illegally to give birth, thereby giving their children U.S. citizenship. 

Now foreign nationals have another “pathway”—through permissive U.S. surrogacy laws. Lax U.S. laws governing international surrogacy allow foreign nationals, to “rent a womb” from American women.

Source: https://www.financialexpress.com/business/investing-abroad-us-birthright-citizenship-surrogacy-in-america-and-chinese-baby-brokers-issues-3786546/