So much for the stereotype of American families adopting abandoned babies from orphanages in developing countries. Now the rich parents in those countries are paying American women to be surrogate mothers:
http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/23/news/china-us-surrogacy/
The American women net $35-45k for each baby. Just think: a quick way to cash for college.
The US used to export high-end manufactured goods to the rest of the world. Now we’re exporting beef and this.
It sounds like the Chinese can’t have surrogacy in their own country and another incentive is the US citizenship of the babies. I bet there are still plenty of American couples adopting Chinese babies. This sounds like the wealthy families trying to have their “own” baby, and they can afford it.
Let’s not forget too that a Chinese corporation bought Smithfield because it is twice as costly to raise pigs in China vs. North Carolina due to the environmental requirements that they have and we don’t!
So, when these American women give birth, do those babies get US citizenship? If they’re born here, yes.
due to the environmental requirements that they have and we don't!
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What could those be since China is typically awful in regards to the environment and food safety.
“This potential merger raises real food safety concerns that should alarm consumers,” said Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), a longtime proponent of tougher food safety regulations. ” We know that Chinese food products have been a threat to public health and that Shuanghui was found to have produced and sold tainted pork. This merger may only make it more difficult to protect the food supply.”
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Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch blasted the merger, saying in a statement that the deal is “bad news for U.S. farmers and consumers, the environment and food safety.”
“While it’s making business news headlines, U.S. consumers will likely not take notice of the change, but it will show up on their plates in the form of farmer exploitation, more factory farms and a more complicated supply chain that leaves consumers at higher risk of food contamination,” said Hauter.
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Of course because in this case, the [legal] mothers are US citizens.
The reason it’s cheaper to produce pork in the US has nothing to do with environmental requirements in China. From motherjones.com:
“It’s now cheaper to produce pork in the US than in China. You read that right: Our meat industry churns out hogs for about $0.57 per pound, according to the US Department of Agriculture, versus $0.68 per pound in China’s new, factory-scale hog farms. The main difference is feed costs.”
Very few babies now adopted from China. The vast majority of international adoptions from China are children with significant special needs. The wait for a healthy baby is many, many years (like 8+) and there is an expectation that adoption of healthy babies and toddlers will end soon.
There were 7903 adoptions from China by Americans in 2005. There were 2040 adoptions in 2014 by Americans.
A friend of mine has done this, and is currently carrying a baby for a (non-Chinese) foreign couple. I don’t know if any of her previous surrogacies were for Chinese. There are several countries that don’t allow it.
The US is still a major machine exporter. And Econ 101, the US has a major competitive advantage in agriculture. THe US has the most productive farms per acre of any country.
So, do these surrogate births with a citizen baby give a quicker pathway for the parents to get visas to live here?
Well it will be 18 years minimum before the citizen baby can serve as an immigration sponsor for its non-citizen parents, and even then that will be denied if the citizen child cannot provide evidence that he/she will be able to cover the non-citizen parents’ costs at some specific percentage of the poverty line for five years.
According to the article till the child turns 21 they would not be able to apply for a green card for their parents.
Just based on what I read I don’t think this should be made legally possible. If it was possible in another country would the parents still go for this? Probably not but the child having a chance to be born an American citizen is very attractive.
Quicker than EB-5? No. A quick google search says it take’s about 6 months to get approval for EB-5.
I don’t understand why there would be any demand for this, but however much demand there is for it it can’t be much. I understand EB-5, I don’t understand “Let me pay 130K right now, and hopefully in 20 years I can become a citizen or permanent resident, provided the laws don’t change.” It’s not cost efficient for just wanting a kid and being unable to conceive (and being illegal in your own country), it’s not cost efficient for immigrating to the US, it’s not anything.
These are wealthy couples and I doubt US citizenship for their babies are a priority for them. If they have money, they can find many ways to have legal residence in the US. In the future, these US citizens’ income will be subject to US taxes no matter where the income is earned. At the moment, I don’t think they are thinking about the future tax implications and they are just happy to have a baby since surrogacy is illegal in many countries.
There are many well-to-do US born citizens who have lived abroad all their lives and they are renouncing their US citizenship to avoid US taxes.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/08/pf/taxes/american-expats-passports-renounce/
I must say that it is ridiculous for a person who makes all of their income out of the country and always has and hasn’t lived here since he was 5 years old to be required to pay taxes here.
@mom2collegekids - in NC the waste at pig farms is allowed to be put into uncovered cesspits where it is not treated at all. The only requirement is that it stay below a foot of the top of the “moat” to make it less likely to run off in case of heavy rain (there have been cases of towns being flooded with pig waste in the past). When the level gets high, the farmers spray it onto the fields, calling it fertilizer. You can imagine what the neighbors call it.
In China, pig waste pits are required to be capped so the methane emissions are captured. I’m not sure what else they require.
But the babies are yacht anchors, not dinghy anchors. And the yacht owners only need to use the anchor if a ‘perfect storm’ brews in their native waters.
The LA times had a series reporting on blocs of apartments (and the associated industry/commerce) used for pregnant foreign mothers to live, typically for a month or so before and after giving birth. Surrogacy simply outsources this function.
It’s not necessary to travel so far.
When I was skiing in Japan, I chatted with a young American woman who was vacationing from her daytime job as a maternity ward nurse in Saipan, a US territory in the South Pacific. The hot thing there is birth tourism for Chinese nationals.