Inside the world of birth tourism
Yuming Fang/Medium
Superior health care and future educational opportunities have women traveling from abroad to give birth in the U.S.
Wearing pink pajamas and gray plastic sandals, Jenny Qin relaxes on a couch and watches short videos on her iPhone. She’s in a spacious Rancho Cucamonga, California, residence used as a maternity hotel for Chinese “birth tourists.” She says this is her third time giving birth in the U.S. Then she stops watching videos and shows me photos of her two babies.Birth tourism is a well-known phenomenon. In recent years, it has drawn well-off pregnant women, mostly from China and Russia, to the U.S. for birthright citizenship (which President Trump has vowed to eliminate). As long as pregnant women don’t lie on immigration or insurance paperwork, this practice is currently legal and protected by the 14th Amendment, which allows anyone born on American soil to automatically receive U.S. citizenship.
Chinese moms-to-be have been flocking to the U.S. for around a decade. They’re drawn by the possibility of advanced health care technology and a world-class education for their children. According to Qianzhan Industry Research Institute, the number of birth tourists reached 80,000 in 2016, about 16 times as many as 2008, the first year Chinese people could apply for a U.S. visitor visa for birth tourism.Qin has a seven-year-old son and a four-year-old daughter, both born in California. She says the most important reason to bear her children in the U.S. is to give them “more choice.”
Qin says, “Personally, I prefer American education to Chinese exam-oriented education. I hope my children can grow up in a less-pressured environment.”
From their first year, Chinese high school students face intense pressure to prepare for the National College Entrance Examination (more commonly known as Gaokao), which determines whether students can gain admission to elite universities. Qin doesn’t want her children to deal with numerous practice exams in Chinese schools. She plans to send them to high school in the U.S.
“But it depends on my children’s decisions,” Qin says. “If they don’t want to study in the U.S., that’s fine. They can also benefit from an American passport even if they stay in China.”Qin says the U.S. passport means her children can more easily be admitted to China’s top universities. In China, students with foreign passports don’t need to take Gaokao. Instead, these students gain admission by meeting the Mandarin level and passing an interview with the admissions committee.
Qin also wants to take advantage of what she sees as more advanced medical care in the United States. In U.S. hospitals, women can deliver in a single room, “but in China, two or three women give birth in a delivery room,” she says. “Obstetricians don’t have much time to talk with you and know your physical or mental situations.”
Each time Qin has come to the U.S. to give birth, she has stayed three months in a maternity hotel located in a luxurious community in Rancho Cucamonga. She spends two months preparing for delivery and one month recovering after giving birth. The total cost is about $27,800, which she considers acceptable.“I was very satisfied with the maternity hotel when I gave birth to my first and second baby,” Qin says. “So I still chose it for my third child.”Maternity hotels in Southern California have been around for about three decades. When they first opened, Taiwanese women gave birth with the help of relatives or friends living in the U.S. to protect their children from mandatory military service. As more expectant Taiwanese mothers followed, those in the U.S. quickly discovered how profitable hosting them could be. Maternity hotels offering comprehensive services sprang up in San Gabriel Valley, San Bernardino, and Irvine, California.
Glen Qu is the owner of the maternity hotel where Qin stays. He opened the maternity hotel in 2014, right after his wife gave birth in the U.S.“I felt I could make a fortune,” he says, adding that the cost of managing a maternity hotel is much lower than the charge from clients. “I can earn about 30 percent from the charge.”Shuttered and painted brightly with white trim, Qu’s two-story maternity hotel looks like a typical large Rancho Cucamonga tract home.Qu offers four types of three-month packages for his clients: the master room at $27,880; the advanced suite for $25,880; the general suite for $23,880; and a secondary room with a shared restroom for $20,880. If the birth tourist brings along their family, the additional charge is $35 per day for adults and $25 per day for children ages two to nine.
The maternity hotel’s services begin at the Los Angeles International Airport. Qu picks up his guests and delivers them to their reserved room. Every day, the maternity hotel’s two on-staff chefs provide three meals (four dishes and one soup) as well as seasonal fruit. Qu drives his clients to shop and dine out twice a week. He also helps find obstetricians for them, drives them to prenatal care appointments, and takes to the hospital for delivery.