Birth Tourism & Anchor Babies

Radio Commentary, 90.7, 91.7 New Life FM, October 23, 2015 – By Sue Ella Deadwyler

You’ve probably heard the term, “anchor babies,” and you probably know that it refers to babies born to illegal aliens in the United States. Also, they’re called “jackpot babies,” because the illegal alien who delivers a child on U.S. soil has hit the jackpot – citizenship for the baby, and benefits for the family. Pew Research reported 350,000 babies born in the U.S. between March 2009 and March 2010 to at least one illegal immigrant parent.

It’s not unusual for Mexican women to apply for visitors’ visas that allow border residents to travel inside a 25-mile zone in the U.S. for up to three days to shop and visit family, and, while they are here, give birth to an anchor baby. But a CEO of McAllen Texas Medical Center near the border described seeing pregnant women “about to give birth that walk up to the hospital still wet from swimming across the river in actual labor … dirty, wet, cold … here to have a child in the United States.”

But do you know the term, “birth tourism?” Birth tourists are foreigners who travel to this country to give birth to a newborn that receives U.S. citizenship and immediate qualification for a U.S. passport. Some estimate that 36,000 tourists from all over the world come into the U.S. every year to give birth to a baby here. Estimates are that at least 500 companies operating in China offer birth tourism services into the U.S.In 2012 Chinese nationals gave birth to 10,000 babies in the U.S., up from 4,200 in 2008, and Koreans run dozens of birthing hotels in and around Los Angeles. A 2010 article said the practice of Nigerians traveling to the U.S. to have a child is “spreading so fast it is close to becoming an obsession.” A $45,000 “birth tourism package” offered by a Turkish-owned hotel group served 15 families last year, in Manhattan.

Russians prefer Florida, where birth tourists deliver about 40 to 60 babies in Miami every month, to give U.S. citizenship to their children, in America’s top-notch medical facilities.

Since the Constitution has been misinterpreted to allow this to happen, Representative Steve King (R-IA) has introduced H.R. 140 to clearly define citizenship in the U.S. Please call Representative Trey Gowdy (R-SC) at 1-877-762-8762 FREE and ask him to pass it out of his committee. For Georgia Insight I’m Sue Ella Deadwyler, your Capitol Corespondent.