The China Mifubaby Group website translation excitedly shared the news: “US Supreme Court decision finalized: Birth tourism babies still become citizens!”
On its website, the group, also known as Meifu Jia’er, displayed photos of tastefully decorated bedrooms in pastel blue, pink, and green under the heading “American Postnatal Care Center” in Irvine, California. Prices ranged from $43,800 for a 2-bedroom, 1-bath villa to $33,800 for a mid-range suite.
“With the increasing demand for childbirth in the United States, more and more expectant mothers in China are planning to give birth there,” the Mifubaby Group website claimed.
These are just two examples of companies seeking to capitalize on the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 30 landmark decision in Trump v. Barbara, which held that children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are citizens at birth under the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment.
Trump’s Executive Order 14160 attempted to end automatic birthright citizenship for American-born children of illegal immigrants and temporary visa holders. The order was ultimately struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court as unconstitutional.
Chinese aren’t the only foreign nationals advertising birth tourism, though they have received the lion’s share of publicity. Women from Mexico, Turkey, Russia, and Nigeria are listed as countries of origin by groups tracking the trend.
For example, a Texas hospital recently advertised “childbirth packages in South Texas” on a Spanish-language billboard in Mexico along the U.S. Southern border. Prices ranged from $3,950 for a natural birth to $5,525 for a cesarean section birth, directing people to havemybabyinTEXAS.com, which is no longer operational.
The incident prompted Gov. Greg Abbott to accuse the hospital of engaging in birth tourism and call for an investigation this month. It also drew a response from President Donald Trump.
“Billions of dollars will be illegally made by this SCAM, with Citizenship going to anyone willing to pay. It will be, by far, the number one way of becoming a citizen, and then the entire family will be allowed to follow. Not sustainable. NOBODY SAW THIS COMING!!! AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP IS NOT FOR SALE!” Trump said in a July 8 post on Truth Social.
Incentives
Experts responded to the court’s decision, saying that it removed a potential deterrent to practices like birth tourism.
Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at Advancing American Freedom, told The Epoch Times he expects to see an uptick in birth tourism following the court’s decision last month to uphold birthright citizenship.
“We have absolutely no control over who their parents are, or why they were in the United States,” von Spakovsky said of foreign nationals here illegally or temporarily who have babies stateside.
He pointed to a 2023 Pew Research Center study showing about 320,000 babies were born in the United States to parents here illegally or on temporary visas as evidence of the growing problem.
An estimated 20,000 to 26,000 babies are born through birth tourism per year, according to the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).
A Migration Policy Institute article argued that birth tourism accounts for a small share of overall American births and that concerns were overblown. There are other ways to mitigate the impact of birth tourism, the group said.
The article called birth tourism “an extremely small phenomenon with no sign of becoming more pronounced.”
Birth tourism of and by itself isn’t illegal. However, knowingly providing false information on a visa application is considered immigration fraud under Title 18, U.S. Code, Section 1546(a). Charges linked to birth tourism can include conspiracy, money laundering, wire fraud, and healthcare fraud, according to federal authorities.
Birth tourism is one way foreign nationals exploit U.S. birthright citizenship to circumvent immigration laws meant to protect American sovereignty and security, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).
In light of the ruling, the DOJ issued a memo directing more resources to stopping illegal birth tourism.
Taxpayers Holding the Bag
A federal investigation in Southern California that began in 2013 uncovered the nation’s first organized birth tourism nexus.
One of those companies, You Win USA Vacation Services Corporation, served more than 500 women with a “100-person team” in China and the United States—making it one of the largest birth tourism schemes ever uncovered in the United States.
In the case of You Win USA, Chinese nationals failed to pay all their medical bills after giving birth, “including hospital, doctor, and other bills, which would then be referred to collection,” according to a federal indictment.
One birth tourism mother paid the hospital only the indigent rate of $4,080 for hospital bills that actually exceeded $28,000, even though at that time the woman had access to $225,000 in a U.S. bank account. She and a partner had been making purchases at Rolex in Costa Mesa, California, and Louis Vuitton in Beverly Hills, California, according to the indictment.
Other schemes tied to birth tourism involve rich Chinese men using American surrogates to give birth to U.S. citizens, according to California police.
Trojan Horse
John Shu, a California-based legal scholar who served under both Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, told The Epoch Times that concern about birth tourism is warranted.
Shu, a member of the National Committee on U.S.–China Relations, said the practice poses a national security risk, costs taxpayers money when foreign nationals don’t pay their medical bills, and can even hurt the children themselves.
Shu, who penned a Commonplace Substack article on birth tourism, said an American-born child growing up in communist China would be the perfect spy for the Ministry of State Security. As an American citizen, he or she would have a U.S. passport and could enter and exit the United States at will.
“The Constitution says you have to be born here. It doesn’t say anything about having to grow up in the United States,” he said.
Birth tourism babies raised abroad are unlikely to experience U.S. culture or adopt American values. If they return to the United States, some experts fear they could undermine national security.
As U.S. citizens, they are eligible to hold sensitive government jobs and even become American presidents, von Spakovsky noted.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if the Chinese government, Chinese spy agencies were themselves involved behind the scenes in financing and organizing these kinds of operations,” he said.
Their affluent client list included doctors, lawyers, and Chinese government employees and officials, according to a federal indictment detailing the operation.
Another company involved in the California birth tourism scheme was USA Happy Baby Inc.
Happy Baby operators Michael Wei Yueh Liu and Jing Dong were convicted by a jury in 2024 of conspiracy and 10 counts of international money laundering. Each was sentenced to 41 months in prison.
Happy Baby Chinese national clients included a woman who was deputy director of the Henan People’s Radio Station in Zhengzhou, Henan; the wife of the “Chairman” of the Chengdu Baotai Industrial Group Co. Ltd. in Chengdu, Sichuan; and the wife of a former police officer with the Public Security Bureau of the Beijing Municipal Government, according to a federal indictment.
“Many of these women, their husbands were high-up, important officials in the communist regime that runs China,” von Spakovsky said.
Von Spakovsky added that the Public Security Bureau was Beijing’s secret police, so it was unlikely that the wife of a former member would have traveled to the United States without the knowledge of Chinese officials.
“Now why would they want their wives participating in something like that?” he asked.
“Well, because that’s an easy way to, years later, get their sons and daughters who’ve been trained to be anti-American while they’re growing up in China into the U.S.
“If their secret police were involved in this, that was a deliberate, intentional policy.”
Ammon Blair, security consultant and senior fellow for the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Secure and Sovereign Nation Initiative, said that if those American-born babies grow into hostile adults who return stateside, they could make the United States vulnerable from within.
It’s not beyond the realm of possibility for Beijing to use social engineering against Washington to harm America politically or through espionage, he said.
”Every foreign national that comes here, that either owes allegiance to outside the United States or is under bondage and captivity to another foreign nation … must do the bidding of that nation while they’re here inside the U.S.,” Blair said.
Inside Birth Tourism
In total, the federal government indicted 19 people involved in three Southern California birth tourism operations that helped thousands of foreign nationals give birth, according to a 2019 government press release.
Most of the 19 people either pleaded guilty or were convicted and sentenced, or remain fugitives, primarily in China.
More recently, the China Mifubaby Group boasts that it helped “thousands of Chinese mothers who traveled to the United States to give birth.” It supports Chinese families wishing to have a child in America with consultations, U.S. visa processing, maternity lodging, and follow-up services after the American-born baby returns to China.
China’s Kangbixing birth tourism company outlined almost identical advantages of U.S. citizenship over Chinese citizenship—similar to advertisements operations ran more than a decade ago.
Those include better job opportunities, social security benefits “even outside the U.S.,” and the possibility of family members immigrating to America.
Thirteen years ago, You Win USA operated out of California, advertising American nationality as “the most attractive,” offering military, political, technological, and cultural advantages, “with no sign of that fading,” according to a federal indictment.
One of the business operators, Dongyuan Li, pleaded guilty in September 2019 to conspiracy to commit immigration and visa fraud. She was sentenced in December 2019 to 10 months in prison and agreed to forfeit more than $850,000, a residence, and vehicles.
Likewise, Chao “Edwin” Chen fled to China after pleading guilty in 2016 to visa fraud, marriage fraud, and filing a false tax return. In June 2020, he was sentenced in absentia to 37 months and remains a fugitive.
The birth tourism company they operated then extolled the benefits of having an American-born baby—a hedge against environmental, educational, and political problems in China.
You Win USA advertised the benefits of a free education through high school, lifelong Social Security retirement benefits after 10 years of working, and ultimately securing citizenship for parents “after the child becomes an adult,” according to an indictment of a company operator.
According to Li’s indictment, clients filled out 8- to 14-day tourist visas for stays in Hawaii, New York, or Los Angeles, when in fact they were coming to the United States to give birth and to stay for three months in Irvine, California.
One of the strategies offered to “slip through the U.S. Visa and Customs” involved booking flights via Hawaii rather than direct flights to California, because they thought it would be easier to fool those in Hawaii, according to the indictment.
Details in the criminal complaint show that Chinese birth tourists applying for visas were advised to say they intended to stay at the “5-star Trump International Hotel Waikiki Beach” in Honolulu before catching another flight to Los Angeles. The belief was that it would be easier to get through customs in Hawaii.
Documents showed You Win USA operators rented 20 apartments in Orange County, California, under false names to house a revolving door of pregnant Chinese women, according to a federal indictment.
Li and others grew rich, according to the indictment, raking in millions and living large. You Win USA charged customers between $40,000 and $80,000 for their packages.
Li drove a $118,000 Mercedes-Benz and bought a $2.1 million house in Irvine, California, according to her indictment.
The Epoch Times has reached out to Kangbixing and China Mifubaby Group for comment.
