http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/08/news/china-birth-tourism/index.html
I like how with Chinese women, it is “birth tourism” but with Latina women, they are anchor babies.
I live in an area that saw a steady stream of Chinese, Korean and Polish women have come to have children. My DH worked at an apartment complex that had at least 9-15 births in their complex each year. I imagine we will see many of these tourism babies in school in a few years.
Why is this just pertaining to Chinese mom? This is also not news. People from around the world have been doing this for ages.
But there is one problem they don’t mention, and that is that China does not allow dual citizenship, so the US citizen child will have no access to medical care or education unless the family can afford it. The baby legally needs a visa to live in China. If the family can afford all that ($20+ for a year at an international school), great, but most cannot.
This is not actually correct. The child has a right to Chinese nationality (having two Chinese parents), and does not need a visa to live in China. There are many complications, but generally if a Chinese citizen is in China, then Chinese nationality prevails, and the purported US citizenship will be ignored.
That is not how I’ve seen it work. The child would need a passport to return to China. The Chinese will know that the child has US citizenship, and will require it to be surrendered before granting the Chinese citizenship. Once the US citizenship is abandoned, it is hard to get again. So the parents don’t register with the Chinese government. The child has no status, no ability to get an education except privately.
This can be a double-edged sword in both Chinas as it also means the American born Chinese who claims Chinese nationality is likely to face greater complications should he/she need US consular protections for legal reasons ranging from arrest on trumped up espionage/political crimes to males falling under the mandate to complete their military service obligation*.
- In the ROC(Taiwan), if a male who is considered "Overseas Chinese" under the law stays in ROC controlled territory for more than a few months straight without a break, he is legally liable to complete the same 2 year military service mandated of native-born citizens. The details are different depending on whether the male was born before sometime in the early-mid-'80s or afterwards. And they won't care if you're a US citizen or not and I recalled reading something in my passport application materials that US citizens with dual-citizenship status with a nation with national military service obligations cannot get out of it so long as it doesn't conflict with US laws.
You can get a passport without being in the issuing country …
Maybe if the mother comes on a legal visa, it is birth tourism, if she breaks the law, it is an anchor baby. Country of origin is not important.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/top-us-colleges-push-diverse-students-china-28567420?page=2 U.S. Colleges Seek Economic Diversity in Students from China by CBS story
Why bother flying all the way to CA?
Last year on a ski trip in Japan, I chatted w a US nurse who was on holiday from her daytime working in Saipan
http://saipanexplorer.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/cnmi_map_2.jpg
She was a maternity ward nurse delivering babies for Chinese birth tourists. Saipan is a US territory. Being born there also confers US citizenship.
I love my country, but as an American working overseas, if I had to pick a nationality of convenience from scratch, it sure as heck wouldn’t be American nationality. We have the most onerous foreign earned income taxation scheme. Don’t know why any rich Chinese would want to subject themselves to it if they could get Canadian or Aussie passports.
I would think a Mainland Chinese’s baby born in the US would want to get the Chinese passport until he/she is ready to move to the US. As a US born person, he/she could apply for an US passport with a birth certificate any time.
Just a wild guess here: They value the higher education in US more. They may not be knowledgeable enough to know that the retirement system in the two countries you referred to could be better. But, the definition of a “better” retirement system could be different depending on the financial status of each individual family.
Another point: They may come here for better life quality (after they have made the money by polluting their origin country.) The cost effectiveness aspect of how to achieve it may be their secondary concern, especially when their financial resources are above some threshold. (Is it true there are like more than 1.6 millions millionaires in China now and a very high percentage of them are planning to immigrate to one of the “advanced” countries?)
There may be some truth in: the left demonizes the rich, and the right demonizes the poor.
Talking about the rich Chinese, a quite high percentage of new Chinese immigrants (and likely new immigrants of other ethnic too) could be on the wealthy side. It opens my eyes about how many new and young immigrants are capable of paying a lot of cash as down payment for their first property (houses and condos) in California these days, while they are so young (e.g., right after they have been graduate from a school here in US, and well before they have completed their lengthy immigration process.)
I did not read it. Is it more about seeking a full pay student or a student whose parents are capable of paying a higher share of the stick price?
They don’t get Canadian passports because you don’t get Canadian citizenship just by being born there. I don’t know about Australia but I imagine it is true there too.
“Getting married” with an Australian will do.
Chinese prefer the USA because it’s the one they are most familiar with. The US has s sizable Chinese population, one with the longest history of Chinese immigration despite the discrimination. The US is viewed as the one with the best economic and educational opportunity for their children, with the best universities that the Chinese know and respect. Also, California and NY have large Chinese communities and ‘affordable’ real estate for Chinese investors. The weather in CA also doesn’t hurt.
You do get Canadian citizenship by being born in Canada.
The rich parents aren’t getting US citizenship. I don’t see how their income and investments would be subject to the FATCA taxes. I know these are a huge pain in the backside to ordinary American ex-pats, but the baby doesn’t have much income…
Bouders- You are right. Australia doesn’t do it. sorry.